


This is the Will, This is the Way

by shewhospeakswiththunder



Series: Chiasmus [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dathomir (Star Wars), Death and Rebirth, F/M, Fighting the Shadow, Han Solo Dies, Healing, Hero's Journey, Heroine's Journey, Hospitalization, Illnesses, Imprisonment, Interrogation, Kira Ren dies, Kira Ren is dark!Rey, Leia's Funeral, Mortis (Star Wars), Mustafar (Star Wars), Nightsisters (Star Wars), Resurrection, Role Reversal, Self-Discovery, THIS IS A HEA, Vader's Fortress, World Between Worlds, but also screw canon, but only after some things get resolved, creepy oracle, finding balance, good boi Ben, learning to love yourself, let me reiterate SCREW CANON
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 39,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23530576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhospeakswiththunder/pseuds/shewhospeakswiththunder
Summary: The power of the First Order rests in Kira Ren's hands. The expectations of the Resistance rest on Ben Solo's shoulders.What if they should fall?
Relationships: Finn/Rose Tico, Kira Ren/Ben Solo, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Chiasmus [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1137749
Comments: 153
Kudos: 45





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FOREWARD:
> 
> Dear reader,
> 
> I never would have thought before December 2019 that I would be here, writing the last installment of my role-reversal series as a fix-it fic. I had every intention of sticking as closely to canon as I could thematically, because I was so sure that it would explore all the incredible depths and heights that TLJ hinted at. 
> 
> Well. 
> 
> Let this be a love letter to all that TROS could have been, to all the beautiful and transcendent themes of mercy, love, and redemption that we know Star Wars is really about. 
> 
> I hope whoever ends up reading this sees how much this universe and these characters mean to me. This story was never about any one character deserving anything. It’s about the transforming power of forgiveness freely given and love conquering all. It is an HEA, as all my stories are and will be.
> 
> Let us all be bringers of light and grace in every phase of our personal journeys. We must believe in the truth of life and love in our stories, because that’s what makes us human.
> 
> From my heart to yours--
> 
> I hope you enjoy my story.

The Sith temple was _cold,_ icy fingers slipping under Kira Ren’s skin and chilling her to the bone as she slipped through the shadows. The permeating gloom was almost a physical presence that weighed on her, whispering just on the edge of her consciousness in an evil tongue she couldn’t quite make out.

The Darkness here was strong.

Passing by enormous, dimly illuminated tanks of yellow liquid, she closed her eyes against the sickening sight of bodies piled on top of each other. She wrinkled her nose in distaste but moved onward. She had not come for this.

A heavy mist swirled at her feet as she stepped out into an open space and then stilled, suddenly face-to-face with the source of the ominous call she had heard pulling her to this place from across the galaxy.

“Ah, you’ve finally come.”

Yellow eyes stared hungrily out from beneath the ragged remains of a cloak, its frayed hem shifting even in the windless space, a long, articulated mechanical arm holding up the remains of its body. Its wrinkled mouth spread wide, revealing a set of brown teeth, cracked and decayed.

“I felt the summons,” Kira replied as steadily as she could, kneeling in front of the half-creature dangling before her. It was the epicenter of this temple, this thing, the strength of the polluted Darkness.

“Yes.” Obscene pleasure oozed from the word as it fell out of the creature’s mouth. “You’ve also felt the power here, the destiny that awaits you. I see it in your mind.” He stretched a corpse-like hand out toward her, his words echoing uncomfortably inside her head. “You feel it reaching out to you. It is in your blood, it is your birthright… _granddaughter.”_

Kira’s head jerked up.

“Yes, you are heir to the Darkness, Kira Ren. It is _yours_ to take. Together, we will rise to create the most powerful empire to ever exist!” His words crescendoed to a feverish exultation, but then fell to a murmur. “Only one thing stands between you and your eternal glory.”

She held her breath.

“Ben Solo,” he spat venomously. “Bring him to me and it will all be yours to rule.”

Bowing her head, she replied, “Yes… Master.”

“Good. Go, and do not fail me.”

She rose and turned on her heel, keeping her thoughts carefully blank and ignoring the mutterings tugging at her from the shadows. Striding purposefully through the hallways, she finally reached the broad stretch of deserted plain where she had landed her ship.

A familiar jolt ran through the vessel as she pierced atmo, and she was soon docking in the well-lit hangar of the Star Destroyer that had followed her through the treacherous nebula obscuring the planet below.

Taking the elevator to the _Resurrector’s_ command bridge, Kira briskly approached the captain, blocking out the scattered shock and anxiety her arrival elicited from the ship's personnel.

“Supreme Leader,” he acknowledged, dipping his head in courtesy.

She didn’t spare him a glance, her gaze trained instead on the patterns of thick clouds churning on Exegol’s surface.

 _Exegol._ Even the name sounded like something the body was trying to expel, like the choking of a dying man.

“Destroy it. All of it.” Finally turning to him, she continued. “Leave nothing behind. Not even the rubble.”

The captain twitched his brow at her, but didn’t question the command to eradicate their destination, despite the arduous and hazard-ridden journey.

“Brigadiers, prepare the hull cannons to fire on my mark.”

A minute or so of perfunctory button-pushing and monitoring glowing screens passed before the first brigadier voiced, “Hull canons fully charged, sir.”

With one last look at Kira for confirmation, at which she gave one terse nod, he then loudly commanded, “Fire away.”

As soon as the barrage was loosed, Kira faced him.

“When we’re done here, take us back to the fleet.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

She whirled on her heel and marched off the bridge to the cadence of utter destruction raining down on Exegol. The Force pulsed with the planet’s annihilation, but when the obliteration was complete, the stillness in its wake was like a breath of fresh air.

When she arrived at her private quarters, she settled into a meditative stance. The predictable tug at her center of gravity signaled the _Resurrector’s_ shift into hyperspace, and she took a deep, steadying breath.

Her brows furrowed and she gave a derisive huff. _Granddaughter._ The word teased out half-forgotten memories from a different life, a child’s pathetic longing for a family that would never return. It left a sour taste in her mouth, and even as it slid off that heinous half-puppet’s tongue, it carried the hollowness of a lie. 

Perhaps it was true. Perhaps that abomination _had_ somehow sired her, but ultimately, it didn’t matter. Kira didn’t need the power it had offered her. She had her own.

The only reason she had followed that mysterious summons from so far away was to confirm what she already suspected, what every dark would-be-master had told her: that whatever her fate, it was inexplicably intertwined with that of Ben Solo.

Now all she had to do was find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work will update weekly on Thursdays/Fridays. 
> 
> Feel free to drop by and say hi! 😁💕  
> [tumblr](https://shewhospeakswiththunder.tumblr.com)  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/shewhospeaks2)


	2. Chapter 2

  


From deep in the woods, Ben could feel the beginnings of the Resistance base’s bustle as it woke with the sun. Soon it would be a small storm of activity, purposeful rushing to and fro as life-forms chatted and worked and prepared, their energy a low constant buzzing in the Force.

After hours of meditation, Ben finally had reached that inner calm where he could tap into the all-encompassing power of the Force, surging and ebbing in and through everything.

Taking breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth, Ben’s body left the ground, his hands draped over his crossed legs, finding the same pulse in his own body and savoring the peace it brought him.

A strain of darkness wormed its way in, and Ben flinched as its faint touch exploded into a howling scream of possessiveness, closing around his throat. A hungry hiss screamed through his consciousness—

_Solo—_

A ragged cry tore out of him as he slammed his connection to the Force closed, falling to the forest floor in a tangle of limbs, hands trembling and body heaving. He pounded the ground with his fist and fought against a wave of nausea.

It was Kira. She was getting stronger.

The only person he would have been comfortable sharing his fear with was his mother, and the memory of her recent passing made the loss sting all the more.

She had died in her sleep, peacefully, the doctors had assured them all. Hundreds of candles had lit the small cave in which her funeral had been observed, the sunset casting the surrounding woods in lavender light. Han spoke, in his gruff way, then Maz and Poe, the grief tempered by the knowledge that their beloved General would always be with them, her lasting legacy the spark of hope she had kindled in each of them.

Ben had declined to speak.

It was good he didn’t, because just as Poe had stepped up to deliver his eulogy, the Force had opened wide and Kira Ren had stalked into view. She skidded to a stop, a lingering hush descending as she observed Ben, their eyes locking for the first time since she had hastily closed their connection on Crait. From the way her countenance softened, it was clear she could read Ben’s grief through the bond. His heart was in shambles, and now Kira knew.

She simply stood there, her eyes never leaving him, and Ben’s rushed breathing slowed as a trickle of empathy crossed the connection. His chin trembled, overwhelmed with this unexpected kindness, but just as fresh tears formed in his eyes, the bond closed.

Oddly bereft at the loss of her presence, his gaze flicked back upwards, meeting an uncannily perceptive stare from Maz. That was when Ben realized what this bond between Kira and him truly meant—he was a liability to the Resistance.

If Kira stopped even for a minute to puzzle out why he was grieving, the First Order would have intel on the Resistance that the ragtag group couldn’t afford to share.

It was imperative that he become stronger, find some way to stop these connections, and with every passing day the pressure heightened. It was only a matter of time before Kira discovered how to use their strange connection to her advantage. Everything was staged perfectly to fall apart at his fingertips, and the knowledge wore him thin.

To Ben’s chagrin, he looked up from his spot on the ground to see none other than Maz leaning against a nearby tree, smirking, her arms crossed.

“Having some difficulty, I see,” she observed.

Ben shakily wiped cold sweat from his brow and pushed himself up to sitting. “You could call it that.”

“Care to share with an old friend?”

He shook his head, unable to meet her eyes.

“My dear child.” She stepped over to him and took one of his burly hands to hold in both her tiny ones. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

He pulled away from her grip. “I know.”

“This war… it won’t be won on a battlefield.”

The hot temper that simmered so readily within him these days reared up. Gritting his teeth, he shot back, “Right, we can just talk it all out.”

Maz sighed and turned to leave, but said over her shoulder, “You may not understand it now, but you will. When the time is right.”

 _Time,_ Ben scoffed inwardly. The one thing he didn’t have enough of, and needed most.

***

“We’ve just received intel on Operation Wildfire,” Poe stated gravely to the Resistance members gathered around the holo-console. “One of our operatives has been captured.”

A tense quiet fell on the room.

“We’re unsure of her status. Our second operative _has_ been successful in infiltrating the stormtrooper ranks, but hasn’t been able to get to her. At present, the success of this mission remains our priority.”

Everyone knew what that meant—a rescue wasn’t in the cards at this stage of the game. Grim news, but with so few people and resources, they had to be pragmatic.

Poe continued. “He has yet to establish any connections, but the operation continues. As we all know, Wildfire was the General’s last initiative. She believed in this, in giving these people the power and choice to bring the First Order down from the inside. She trusted this to work and I do, too.”

Nods of agreement rippled around the console.

“Updates will be sporadic, but I’ll keep everyone posted. That’s all,” Poe finished, dismissing the group and walking away.

Ben’s long strides quickly caught up to Poe.

“What can I do to help?” Ben asked, cutting in front of him.

Poe paused. “Keep up with your training?” At Ben’s disappointment, he added, “There’s just not much else for you to do right now. The Order’s been… letting things settle. Probably just biding their time, but it’s given us a little breathing room. Regroup, get new recruits in. Your time will come soon enough.”

Poe gave him a bracing clap on the shoulder and side-stepped him.

“What about our operative?”

Poe sighed. “We can’t jeopardize this mission and more lives just to save one. We just can’t.” He edged closer to Ben and lowered his voice. “I don’t like it any more than you do. She’s one of the good ones, and losing her… that would be on me.” He looked up, pleading with Ben to understand. “She’s strong. She knew what might happen. We have to accept that.”

The thought of one of their own in the First Order’s clutches, in _Kira’s_ clutches— Ben shut that trail of thought down. There was a time when he believed there was good in Kira Ren. After the path she’d chosen on the Supremacy, on Crait… he didn’t believe it anymore.

Left with nothing else to do, Ben trudged back to the outskirts of the base, eager to escape the hubbub he suddenly felt disconnected from.

Barely five minutes passed as he tried to meditate when he felt _her,_ just on the other side of his consciousness, her own awareness honing in on him like a convor that had just spotted its prey. The intensity of her emotions crashed into him, her surprise, her frustration, a gasp in recognition—

 _Finally!_ She crowed with glee.

Ben rammed his mental walls down, severing whatever bridge had joined their minds, the ability to read her thoughts across the bond making his hands sweat and his stomach churn. How could he be expected to train if every time he reached for the Force, _she_ was there?

With an inarticulate cry of fury, Ben ignited his saber and swung out, felling a large tree and watching it crash down in a tangle of leaves and branches, narrowly missing the Wookiee and the speeder bike he was working on not twenty yards away.

Chewie popped out from the undercarriage and roared a few choice words at Ben, shaking his fist in the air.

“Well, it _didn’t_ hit you, did it?” Ben yelled back, instantly regretting his own venomous words. That wasn’t how he treated Chewie. Ever.

Continuing to bellow at Ben, Chewie began to rummage through his tool bag as Ben jogged over, now thoroughly chastised. Holding out a weighty axe to Ben, Chewie lowered his tone as he admonished him.

“I’m sorry,” Ben forced out, feeling like a child, and taking the tool by its long handle. “I’ll take care of the tree.”

Ben was fully aware he was repressing a variety of problems and worries, and Chewie’s strong suggestion to _‘Work it off, Solo,’_ wasn’t a bad one. As a still grumbling Chewie went back to work on the bike, Ben set to chopping the tree for firewood.

It wasn’t long before the muscles in his arms and shoulders began to burn, but it was a good burn. The physical labor helped him to focus, to clear his mind. _Lift, downswing, tug._ All his worries fell to the wayside, replaced by the steady rhythm of the axe— _lift, downswing, tug—_ offering him a different means of meditation.

He started to add a little push from the Force into the downswing, his hands tingling as the axe hit the trunk. Sweat pooled on his brow, the light shirt he wore now clinging to his body and restricting his movement, so he pulled it off, wiped his forehead with it and tossed it to the ground.

Blisters were forming where his palm met the handle, but he powered through— _lift, downswing, tug—_ until he was gasping for breath and his arms trembled with the effort.

“No, not again,” Ben wheezed as the bond blossomed wide in a heady thrum, as unpredictable yet familiar as ever.

 _She_ appeared several yards away, snarling at something he couldn’t see. His heart skipped a beat as he took in the sight of her, the very image of dark power in a long, flowing gown and robes that dripped with cut gems, black as the void of space and glittering dangerously in the light like long rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Whipping around to face him, her mouth fell open in a perfect ‘o’, her eyes as wide as a full-blown pufferpig’s. A potent sense of déjà vu hit Ben, recalling that this wasn’t the first time Kira had seen him drenched in sweat, half-naked, and heaving.

His hands clenched and he winced in pain as the blisters cracked open, shock jolting through him as Kira mirrored his flinch.

Recovering herself quickly, she bared her teeth at him. “I’m going to find you.”

“Shouldn’t have let me go in the first place, huh?” he fired back. That day, not so long ago, ached in Ben’s heart like a rotting tooth. They had defeated her master together, their bond a triumphant song in the Force… and she had knocked him out and sent him packing. What their future could have been festered like a wound inside him.

His eye twitched as he glared at her.

Shock and confusion rippled out to him, Kira’s brows furrowing.

“Something’s wrong,” she murmured, tilting her head at him as her voice echoed oddly through the corridor of bridged space.

Ben swallowed hard and hefted the axe in his hand, the tic under his eye still pulsating.

“Ben,” she said softly, with the faintest trace of… was that concern?

At the sound of his name on her tongue, Ben’s heart flipped in his chest, but her attention was suddenly drawn elsewhere and the connection ended.

It was all too much. Ben was still trying to learn how to navigate through the wake of grief and regret his mother's death had left behind, but now this? To see and hear the woman who spurned him from across a galaxy that should have separated them, to feel her emotions, to understand her thoughts, to read _worry_ for him in the line of her brow and the tone of her voice! It wasn't _fair._

A fire blazed up inside him, consuming the terrible pain that had unfurled in his chest. Allowing the rage full control, it bent the Force around him, pouring from his shoulders into the axe, and he brought down a shattering blow to the tree trunk. The wood almost rippled with the hit, millions of splinters flying all along the length of the downed tree in every direction.

It felt _good._ Fury coursed through him, pounding along his veins with every heartbeat.

Tossing the axe to the ground, he began to walk away, a perverse satisfaction dawning in him at the destruction he left in his wake.

Chewie stopped him with a furry paw to his shoulder. As a child, Ben recalled how small he had seemed next to the towering Wookiee, but now they stood almost shoulder to shoulder. The berating Chewie rumbled at him, something about how you can’t make a fire out of wood chips, but it only added fuel to the inferno inside him.

“Switch off!” Ben barked, the pang of remorse that pierced him swallowed up by the fierce joy singing in his blood.

As he stalked away, Chewie voiced one last questioning growl at his retreating form, but Ben ignored it, too immersed in the tempest of his dark anger to listen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm utterly in love with the moodie my lovely and super smart beta made for this story! I love you and thank you, Erulisse17!!! 💕💕💕


	3. Chapter 3

“Well, then, _Supreme Leader,_ what _is_ the plan?” Hux drawled.

The obvious disrespect in his tone dragged Kira’s wandering thoughts back to the boardroom and the stares of those in attendance. Ranging from mere curiosity to outright dislike to trembling fear, each pair of eyes weighed heavily on her.

She couldn’t allow herself the benefit of distraction. Half of these commanders still harbored mutiny in their hearts. They hadn’t displayed their true colors yet, but when they inevitably would, Kira would do away with them like she had all the others—swiftly and decisively. She could be patient.

What she couldn’t afford was to be undermined by the likes of Commanding Officer Hux, but the issue remained: she didn’t have an answer to his question.

Every mental and physical faculty at Kira’s disposal had been bent solely toward the purpose of solidifying her position and her power within the First Order since the destruction of the _Supremacy_ and the murder of their former Supreme Leader, Snoke. For several weeks, it had been a matter of simply surviving the various and sundry assassination attempts on her life. She had evaded all of them, but they left her exhausted and approaching paranoid. Honestly, the actual trajectory of her rule was not yet determined.

Sovereignty over the most powerful military organization in the galaxy had seemed the ultimate goal, but now that it belonged to her, she had no idea what she wanted to do with it.

An answer was necessary, both for herself and to put Hux back in his place. She stood up, hoping the advantage of height would lend her the high ground.

“Our prime target will be Ben Solo.”

“Who?” A lieutenant general from down the table asked.

The almost imperceptible narrowing of Hux’s eyes did not escape Kira’s notice.

“He’s General Organa’s son, and trained in the Force—” 

“A Jedi?” Another officer interrupted scornfully.

She could practically hear the disbelief and irritation in the air. To them, the Force was a myth, irrelevant lore from a long-forgotten era.

“He stands as a symbol to the Resistance,” she said, evading the question. The particulars of Jedi mastership would have been lost on those present anyway. “To every person or group that defies us. If we capture him, it’ll demoralize the rebels and their leaders. He is the key.”

If Kira had personal reasons to have him in her grasp, her inferiors didn’t need to know.

“And how do you propose we go about catching this… symbol?” Hux asked lazily, the question thick with sarcasm.

“A trap. He’s strong in the Force—”

Again, she could feel them all inwardly rolling their eyes at her. She was well aware how most of them perceived her, as some sort of bogwitch, some sycophant of a dying cult.

She persevered, “—But his emotions make him weak. If we set a snare to draw him out, he’ll come. He’ll want to play the hero.”

“How can we assume that, Supreme Leader?” Another captain spoke up. “If we go through with an operation like this, we can’t make concrete plans on assumptions of his character. The boy could be a spineless mushworm for all we know. It’s too risky, with too little payoff.”

She caught Hux’s little grin and panic snaked into Kira’s belly. They were slipping through her fingers at the worst possible time. She couldn’t lose them, they had to see how important Solo was, to the First Order, to the Resistance. To _her._

“I’ve encountered him in battle several times,” she offered grudgingly.

“I see your point, Captain Nerkus, but perhaps disposing of him would be a critical hit.”

Her head whipped back to Hux.

“Disposing,” she echoed carefully.

He scoffed. “Of course. He’s an enemy of the state. His execution would set quite the example.”

“He might be more valuable to us alive, if I may,” a dark-clad admiral chimed in. “Useful for leverage.”

Ben Solo’s fate balanced on the edge of a knife, the consequences and advantages of his life or death bandied about carelessly by people who didn’t understand, _couldn’t_ understand.

“Solo must be taken _alive,”_ she demanded, the lumi-panels flickering ominously as the underlying threat hit its mark around the table. Kira fought to maintain her calm, but ultimately the lapse in control worked in her favor; reminding them all exactly who they were dealing with. “Are there any other matters to discuss here?”

Wary glances passed between the members.

A small voice piped up from the opposite end of the table, a pale face leaning forward to make eye contact with her. A lower-ranking lieutenant. Mitaka, she thought his name might be.

“S-Supreme Leader, there is the matter of the rebel prisoner we _currently_ have—”

“What?” Kira barked at him, and he flinched.

“I—yes, she was apprehended while trying to impersonate one of our own—”

“Why wasn’t I notified of this before?” Kira swept her gaze across the room, making mental notes of those who cowered before her and those who didn’t.

“I was given to understanding that you were aware,” Hux said coyly.

She pinned Hux with a stare that would have melted ultrachrome. “I’ll see to her. Personally.” Addressing the group at large, she finished, “Plans for the capture of Ben Solo will be made at a later date. Dismissed.”

She stormed out of the room first. Apparently, she had business to attend to in the cell blocks.

***

“So… guard duty, huh?”

Hearing the familiar tinny timbre of his own voice through his helmet made Finn cringe. It was a sound he had hoped never to hear again, but here he was; back onboard a First Order Star Destroyer, surrounded by enemies, and this time with _much_ higher stakes.

The other guard assigned to cell block 4070 turned to Finn and gave him a cursory glance, resting their hand casually on the blaster at their hip before turning away.

Every day he spent on this vessel was borrowed time, and he needed to start making progress on his mission, but that meant making friends, something Finn was finding harder and harder to accomplish.

The urgency and danger only compounded the doubt he struggled with. Back at the Resistance base, he had sought out Leia, mere hours before he was about to leave, with every intention of withdrawing his participation.

It had been humiliating the way his voice had shaken, how he hadn’t been able to even look her in the eye to say, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

She set her holopad down on her desk. “Oh?”

“I thought I could, I really did, and I want to help, but…” he trailed off.

“You’re afraid?” she finished for him.

He nodded.

“Someone told me a long time ago that ‘courage’ doesn’t mean ‘not afraid.’ It means doing what you know is right even when you _are_ afraid.”

“General, I’m not like you or Poe. I’m not… a leader.”

“Finn, being a leader isn’t about being fearless. I’m afraid every day. What matters is what you do with that fear. You’re scared because you value your life, the lives of others.” She stood gingerly, leaning on her cane, and came around the desk to face him. “They’re the reason we’re fighting, you have to remember that. We have to do things that scare us to protect the people that are precious to us. _That’s_ what keeps us going, despite the fear.”

She had been right, but it didn’t make his current situation any easier.

“I’m RD-2130,” Finn told the other trooper, choosing to persevere.

“TZ-1719,” she responded perfunctorily, clearly disinterested.

The fear roared back. How could Finn be expected to start an uprising if no one would even talk to him?

He took a steadying breath and refocused, calling on his memory of the recruitment techniques Leia had coached him through in preparation. _Find the rocks in their socks,_ she had said. _Find out what makes them tick, what makes them angry._

It was so risky. If this trooper didn’t like what Finn was saying, she had every obligation to report it to her captain. It was a slippery slope to losing his cover from there, but it was now or never.

“Don’t you ever get tired of it all?” Finn faked a casual air, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his helmet.

Slowly she looked at him again. It was impossible to tell what was happening underneath her helmet—exactly the purpose of the helmets to begin with. Strip each trooper of any shred of humanity, so it wouldn’t be a real loss to lose them. Protect the machine by making the cogs forget they were people.

Finn ground his teeth, but continued. “It’s either: Here, sit at this desk for twelve hours every day’ or ‘Here, shoot these t-traitors.’” He plowed on, hoping that if he just kept talking she wouldn’t pick up on his panicky stammer. “Gets old, you know?”

The blank eyes of the helmet lingered on him, and Finn’s heart beat wildly in his chest.

“I don’t remember this cell block needing a co-assignment.”

“Captain’s orders,” Finn flailed, his impending doom suddenly closer than ever. “I don’t ask questions, just do what I’m told.”

Mercifully, they were interrupted by the clattering of the lunch tray cart rolling through the door bearing a single meal.

“There’s only one detainee?” Finn asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yup. Upper echelon probably forgot about her.”

The note of disdain he detected in her voice buoyed his hope, which floated even higher within him by the idea that maybe, just maybe… it might be Rose.

Finn snorted and rolled with it. “Eh, you know how they are.” Thinking quickly, he offered, “I’ll take it down. You good here?”

She gave him a terse, “Yeah.”

Taking the tray, he paused. “Uh, what’s the passcode?”

“They’re written on the bottom of the code panels,” she grumbled.

_“What?”_

That definitely wasn’t protocol.

“Do you have time to memorize them all? They change them once a week. It’s kriffing impossible,” she explained in a huff.

Finn shrugged to himself and made his way down the corridor of cells to the only one with a red light on above the cell door, making a face at the colorless gruel on the tray.

Squatting down awkwardly to search the underside of the metal passcode panel, he only just could make out a string of hand-written numbers.

“Unreal,” Finn breathed as he punched in the code, the door swooshing open to reveal its occupant.

She was still in First Order uniform, although the rumpled clothing had seen better days. Her hair was a mess and she looked like she hadn’t seen the inside of a proper ‘fresher in days, but there she was.

Rose.

Her eyes flashed up to meet his, and she promptly ignored him, sitting up stiffly as he stepped into the small, drab space. At first surprised by her reception, he reminded himself that she had no idea who he was.

Tear tracks were clearly visible against the grime on her cheeks, and Finn’s first instinct was to run to her and hug her, to tell her everything was going to be all right, but he held back.

If she found out he was here, it would put both of them in even greater danger, and a piece of him was crushed. If she were to be interrogated… Finn was all too aware of the First Order’s proficiency at getting exactly what they wanted out of prisoners. That thought brought its own heartbreak, that a member of his team, his friend, someone he maybe even had feelings for, might be hurt at the hands of this pitiless regime.

He was dawdling and he could see Rose was getting nervous, so he gently set the tray down beside her.

“Um, here you go.”

Rose threw him a feisty side-eye, and he retreated hastily back to the main console and the company of TZ-1719.

Sitting in his chair, Finn puttered at the console and brought up the live feed of Rose’s cell on the monitor, leaning back to watch as she pulled her knees up to her chest and quietly started to cry. His heart stuttered in sympathy.

He had to get her out of there. The sooner, the better.


	4. Chapter 4

  


Night and day didn’t technically exist in the infinite void of space, but the _Resurrector_ had strictly enforced hours when non-essential personnel were expected to retire to their quarters and rest. This was Kira’s preferred time to be on the move.

Under Snoke’s apprenticeship, Kira had learned how strength could be gleaned from the fear she elicited in others. Her master had encouraged it, teaching her to harness it to her advantage. Cultivating a terrifying reputation had been easy. Her frequent bursts of anger and loss of self-control weren’t exactly intentional, often resulting in extensive damage to inanimate objects, but were certainly useful.

Instinctive cringes and flares of panic at the sight of her boded well, indicators of her success, but they never had given her pleasure. Strangely, their flinches and cowering only incited more anger within her - covering the little pinpricks of hurt from their reactions, proof that no matter where she turned, she’d only be met with loneliness and fear.

Instead of marching down the corridor during the height of the vessel’s hustle and bustle, Kira could slip through the ship quietly and quickly during resting hours, avoiding the terrified salutes and whispered warnings to each other.

Blessed silence followed her as she made her way to cell block 4070, waving aside the thick durasteel door leading to the block. Stepping across the threshold, Kira was met by a single trooper on duty, snoring softly in his chair at the main console.

It would be well within her right as Supreme Leader to throw him in a cell for insubordination and order him sent for reconditioning… but to what end? The crew already feared her. Why make an example of this poor soul?

His dreams were fitful things, and she could sense his unease rippling in the Force. Nervous, even in sleep. Kira couldn’t find it in herself to care if one tired man caught a few much-needed moments of rest. Exhaustion was a long-time companion of hers, after all.

Stepping lightly past the sleeping guard, Kira disregarded the passcode panel and opened the door to the single occupied cell with a flick of her wrist. The prisoner woke from a light doze as Kira strode confidently inside, and the rebel bolted upright, quickly realizing the severity of the situation.

Without warning, Kira lifted a gloved hand and penetrated the prisoner’s mind.

It was always unpleasant, occasionally painful to the victim if she so chose, but the process was uncomfortable for Kira as well. The initial bombardment of overwhelming emotions and memories that didn’t belong to her made her queasy every time. Experiencing so much, absorbing their hate and hurt, that creeping sense of violation churned her stomach in a mix of shame and vicarious fear.

Purposeful, but without urgency, Kira sifted through the tumble of images and feelings, panning for anything involving the Resistance’s whereabouts or their plans, but stumbled instead on searing grief, pain, loss… _her sister’s death._

This was a bargaining chip, a chance to apply pressure without invading the mind. Kira withdrew.

“Your sister didn’t need to die.”

“She would rather have died than see the First Order win!” The rebel shouted, tears running down her cheeks.

“How many more lives could be spared, if you just give me what I want? These deaths, this suffering, it’s pointless.”

“She died for what she believed in!” The girl sprang up, her fists curling at her sides. “Just like I will!”

Typical rebellious fervor. Kira was unimpressed.

“And what is it you believe in, exactly? Fighting a losing war?”

None of the Resistance’s efforts made sense to Kira, even from the beginning. Why struggle against the First Order? It was vanity to think there would be an outcome other than eventually bowing to its might.

“I believe in freedom from tyrants like _you.”_

That surprised her. _Tyrant?_ Kira barely managed to keep even a tenuous hold on the ever-turning wheel of power within the Order—it was a near impossible feat to maintain allegiance even amongst her own.

Honestly, if she didn’t need the reaching power and abundant resources of the First Order to prepare for that unknowable destiny as it inevitably drew nearer, she would toss them aside and leave Hux and the rest of the backbiting horde to their petty planetary conquests. For some time now, the Force had whispered deep within her of their approaching fate. Something bigger than either the Resistance or the First Order was coming, and Kira— and Ben— must be prepared.

Kira bared her teeth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me where Ben Solo is.”

Confusion flickered over the girl’s features. _“That’s_ what you want to know?”

This prisoner couldn’t possibly understand it either, just like the admirals and commanders around the boardroom table couldn’t. But she didn’t have to convince this girl, she just needed the information.

“You can tell me now, and your death will be quick and painless. Or, stay silent and _suffer.”_

The rebel spit at Kira, the glob landing next to her boot.

“So be it,” Kira snarled, and threw up her hand, blasting into her mind like laser fire. But even as she raked through each memory, pulling the girl apart and ripping her open at the seams— the terror, the helpless anger, the _despair—_ Kira’s nausea rose up, and she backpedaled. If she didn’t exit the cell that instant, the contents of her stomach would end up all over the floor, and what a humiliating display that would be.

Kira stormed out of the cell, her stomach churning.

_Let her rot._

***

Golden sunlight dappled the worn pages of Ben’s book. The rare privilege to hold an actual text in his hands filled him with a warm joy, and bringing the old flimsy up to his nose, he inhaled and savored the slightly musty, sweet smell of _paper._ It was amazing.

In between attempted meditation and the odd job assignment, Ben had license to do as he pleased on the base on Ajan Kloss, and exploring the winding network of underground buildings occupied much of his time. He liked the quiet of the long-forgotten corridors, the solitude of exploring by himself. The little library he had stumbled across during one of his afternoon expeditions had been a pleasant surprise.

Most of the physical texts were technical manuals, but whatever life-form had curated it long ago had also smuggled in a smattering of literary texts, to benefit the philosopher as well as the mechanic.

Any standard-issue holopad had infinite access to data, but this was different. It was like holding a piece of history in his hands, and Ben only gingerly had cracked it open, treating each turned page with careful reverence.

A breeze ruffled through the canopy overhead, and Ben leaned his head back against the trunk of the tree he sat under, an unusual peace drifting over him.

Then _she_ appeared.

The bond unfurled wide, the rumbling hum of their connection as familiar as the back of his hand by now. Cross-legged and enshrouded in shadow, Kira’s eyes snapped open and immediately found his.

He felt her prodding at him through the Force as she scanned him, almost questioningly, but then she receded into herself, satisfied with whatever she had found.

“Why are you trying to find me?” His voice echoed oddly. “You let me go before.”

Kira’s shoulders drooped and she looked away, slanting darkness painting her features in stark relief. “That was before I knew…”

Ben narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Knew what?”

“That you won’t come to me of your own free will,” she evaded. 

“But why do you need _me?”_ Ben pressed, his cheeks flushing as he realized how the question sounded.

She shifted uncomfortably, and he could have sworn her face colored a little. Swallowing, she stared to the side and searched for words. “You and I… our fates are intertwined. There’s something… bigger… coming for us. I’ve felt it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kira bit her lip. “I don’t know what it is. But whatever we must do, it has to be together. If it means making you my prisoner…” she nodded, like she was reassuring herself. “Then I’ll do it.”

Frustration swelled up in him. “If you had just come with me _back then—!”_

“Then what, Ben?” Kira spat at him, standing suddenly, her shoulders tensed as the slatted shadows in her space clung to her form. “What kind of life do you think I could’ve had with you? Among your people?” Her eyes began to well up, and Ben’s heart broke inside him. “I had to choose my own path.”

“To become the Supreme Leader?” He shot back.

“To _survive,”_ she retaliated, ablaze with conviction. “To take what I could and make it _mine.”_

She broke eye contact and all her self-doubt, her insecurity, slowly began to filter across the bond. The constant fear of dissent, the plots for her death, a prisoner’s fiery tirade—

“Tico,” Ben breathed. “You have her.” Memories of her genuine smile and bubbling laughter drifted into his memory, chiding Poe for damaging one of her machines, waving to Finn as she caught a pilex driver. They hadn’t been well-acquainted, but enough to know she didn’t deserve to be used as a pawn in Kira’s games.

Her face still swathed in darkness, her glance flicked up to him.

“Kira—”

“Yes,” she hissed, sensing an opening. “If you want her, come and get her. _Only you.”_

As abruptly as it had begun, the connection ended. Ben shot up and raced back to the Resistance base. He needed to find Poe. Immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kira and Rose, am I right?
> 
> Ben's a nerd and likes books 📘💕
> 
> ANOTHER moodboard by my talented and loverly beta, Erulisse17!!! I'm in love 😍


	5. Chapter 5

The expanse of grasslands shimmered in waves as heavy winds swept across the plains, and Ben’s hair whipped across his face, stinging his cheeks. The hazy gray clouds above gave the sky a flat quality, an ambient light that cast no shadows.

Taking a few steps away from his parked speeder, he checked his holopad for what was probably the hundredth time, reassuring himself that he was in the right place, at the specified coordinates.

The worst part was going in knowing it was a trap.

* * *

**\- 24 standard hours earlier-**

“Slow down,” Poe ordered. “Start from the beginning.”

Ben tried to catch his breath.

“First Order,” he said raggedly. “They have Tico.”

“Okay. We know that.”

“No! They want to negotiate,” he tried to explain.

“How do you—you’re just going to tell me it’s a Force thing, right?”

“Yeah,” Ben huffed.

“General!” Kaydel’s voice rang out from the opposite end of the control room. “Incoming transmission from the First Order!”

Before sprinting over to her, Poe threw a wondering glance back at Ben, to which he could only shrug, still out of breath.

“It’s a generalized broadcast, every functioning comm station in the galaxy is receiving this right now,” Kaydel quickly explained, seeing Poe’s ashen face.

“They still don’t know our location,” he murmured.

Kaydel punched a few buttons and pulled up the message on the main console, a holo of General Hux and his imperious sneer.

“The treachery of the Resistance knows no bounds. There has been an attempt to undermine the glorious reign of the First Order, so let this serve as a message to that pathetic collection of mercenaries and brigands, and to all who sympathize with the lies they spread to all corners of the galaxy—you have been _rooted out.”_

“He’s talking about our operative,” Poe muttered to the group that had gathered.

“We seek order, stability. We do not wish to wage war, and this is why we offer one last opportunity for a peaceful end to this unnecessary conflict. Agree to this, or crumble and fall before the might of the First Order.”

The image of Hux cut out, leaving the room silent except for the hum of the computers.

Kaydel broke the tense quiet. “It has to be some kind of trap. We’re not agreeing to this, right?”

“Not on their terms, no,” Poe stated, bringing his hand up to his chin in thought. “But what’s their motive here? What do they stand to gain from this? They can’t really want to negotiate for one enemy spy.” He rubbed his face. “I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a bad feeling about it, too,” Ben said under his breath.

“Wait,” Kaydel voiced. “There’s something else here… it’s making the reception patchy…”

Poe's attention flicked back to her as she fiddled with the controls, spinning dials and playing with frequency amplifiers, rewinding the transmission and slowing it down so that Hux’s voice distorted, his mouth moving in slow motion around the word ‘opportunity’. Some sort of glitch in the transmission caused the image to flicker and his voice to skip once, twice.

“There! See the interruptions?”

“Yeah, what is that?” Poe asked, his curiosity piqued.

She slowed it down even further, realization dawning on her face. “It’s a hidden code, look!” Flipping a switch she displayed the run of binary on the console, the circles and dashes blurring across the holoscreen.

“An encryption,” Poe breathed.

“Not one we have the key for either,” she sighed, leaning back a bit after typing and toggling switches on the console. Resignedly, she said, “This could take weeks to crack. I’ve never seen it before.”

“Excuse me, but if I might interject,” C3PO said from the corner of the room. “If my memory serves, it appears to be written in an antiquated encryption from the days of the Old Republic. There aren’t many droids currently in use with the capability to decode it. It’s been outmoded for years.”

“Can _you_ decode it?” Poe asked through a thin façade of patience.

“Why, most certainly, General.” The droid ambled over to the console. “It appears to be a set of coordinates to a planet in the Outer Rim.”

* * *

**-present-**

A sleek, black command shuttle flew over Ben’s head with a roar, banking sharply and landing, its massive wings folding upwards. The ramp dropped, and out strode Kira Ren herself, matching her shuttle in head-to-toe black. A hunched-over figure with a sack over their head hovered close behind, presumably immobilized by Kira through the Force.

Ben watched her cross the landscape, stepping confidently through the tall grass even as the wind buffeted her cloak.

His hands began to sweat as his pulse picked up. Knowing what had to be done was easy. Doing it was the hard part.

She stopped several spans away, but close enough for Ben to just make out the healed scar on her left cheek from their fight on Starkiller.

The wind howled stronger.

“Show me it’s her!” Ben shouted to be heard over the gale.

Seeing Kira in the flesh again was… surreal. If he could just cross the distance separating them, he could even reach out and _touch_ her.

Kira hesitated, then pulled the bag off the captive’s head. Bound and gagged, Rose blinked in the gray light, eyes wild with fear.

“What are your terms?” he yelled. He already knew the answer, but he couldn’t stand for a minute more the thought of Rose suffering any more than necessary just because Kira wanted to play these stupid games with him. Best to get on with it.

“You!” Her voice rang clearly over the wind, her bellow laced with enough Force to carry it to him.

Ben nodded once, his heartbeat quickening.

“I want assurances!” She was fierce, her glare at once both beautiful and terrible. “Your saber!”

Taking a step closer, he unclipped it from his belt and held it out, allowing her to snatch it out of his grip with an impatient tug of the Force and clip it to the thick belt around her waist. The loss of the saber’s weight in his palm was devastating, and Ben had trouble keeping at bay the fear threatening to choke him. It screamed at him to run as hard and as fast as he could in the opposite direction, away from her. But he couldn’t.

She finally moved toward him, one deliberate step at a time, Ben matching her pace and tension as they approached each other, stopping only a single span apart.

Her proximity was dizzying. This could have been just another one of their bizarre connections, if the circumstances didn’t clearly indicate otherwise. The last time they had been this physically close, he had offered his hand and a new future to her. 

How things had changed.

Eyeing the binders she held in her hand, he held out his wrists, his heart galloping like an orbak in his chest as she cinched them closed.

Force dampeners. Her distrust stung him a bit, even though it was perfectly sensible that, as an enemy, she’d be a fool not to.

As the cuffs clicked around his arms, Rose screamed in protest through the gag, tears in her eyes, struggling against her bonds. She could have no way of knowing what was truly happening here, but Ben gave her a brief smile of reassurance.

With a wave of Kira’s hand, Rose’s cuffs fell away, and she frantically pulled the gag out of her mouth.

“I can’t let you do this!” she croaked, her voice hoarse.

“Head west. Take the speeder,” he said quickly.

 _“Enough,”_ Kira snarled, anxious to be gone.

Ben mouthed _‘go’_ to Rose and turned away from her, watching from his periphery as she hesitated, then decided to run for the speeder. He heard the engine turn over, then the whine of the bike as it sped off.

Ben’s eyes met Kira’s, and a spark jolted through him, but she quickly glanced away and spoke into the commlink on her forearm.

“Exchange complete. Target secured.”

Making her way back to the ship, Ben was following closely when a concussive blast blew outward from the ship in a wave of fire and sound, the explosive shock lifting them into the air before slamming them back to the ground, debris raining down through the field, the shuttle utterly destroyed. 

All according to plan.

Even though he was prepared for the explosion, it still knocked the breath out of Ben’s lungs, his ears ringing loudly, his brain rattling around his skull. Heaving himself up to his knees, wrists still bound, he heard a groan of pain somewhere nearby. Shuffling through the grass, he found Kira on her side, still stunned.

Acutely aware of their limited window of time, he held his wrists up over the tall grass, hoping it was visible enough.

Over the wind and the rustling of the grass around him, the distant rumble of a Corellian YT-1300 freighter engine kicking into low gear reached his ears. Relief washed over him—his back-up had arrived.

The _Falcon_ landed not too far away, and faintly Ben could hear feet running down the ramp grates. A few moments later and even fainter, the clicking of twenty safety locks switching off in unison.

Moaning and blinking awake, Kira rolled onto her back in a daze. Ben grabbed her lightsaber and jumped up, sprinting toward the figures in drab camouflage that had risen out of the grass, realizing with a sinking sensation that in his panic he had only thought to grab one saber. She still had _his._

Shots fired, and Ben looked back over his shoulder to see her leap high, somersaulting in the air to land directly in front of him. Eyes blazing, she froze his movement mid-stride, bringing her other hand down to the ground with a mighty push through the Force, a shock rippling outward and toppling over every Resistance fighter nearby.

She screamed into her commlink even as they scrambled to their feet and resumed their fire. “Captain! I need reinforcements down here!”

Deflecting as many blasts as she could, one snuck through, tearing a smoking hole in her left shoulder as she cried out in pain.

“Captain! I need help! Do you copy? _Captain!”_

Distracted by the onslaught, her grip on Ben lapsed and he fought out of it, falling to the ground and crawling away. Far from dignified, but at least he had the cover of the grass.

Igniting Ben’s lightsaber, she rushed the frontline head on, mowing people down in a terrific show of strength and speed. One blocked shot ricocheted back and another, and Ben heard a familiar shout, felt the pain… his father’s pain.

A resounding _No!_ pounded through Ben, and unthinking, he ignited Kira’s blade.

A tortured scream from the kyber crystal within the saber pierced him to the quick, the inaudible shriek of suffering almost making him drop the weapon. Every cell inside him recoiled from the agony he held in his hands, but he fought through with a shake of his head. Adjusting his hold on it, he managed to slice through the binders on his wrists, releasing the Force dampeners and allowing him to breathe once more.

He rushed Kira with her own red saber held high, as she spun to meet him. Glowing red crashed against blue in the air, the blades cracking against each other as they spat sparks onto the grass around them. Distantly, Ben heard a command to hold fire.

It was a dance, just like the first time in that snowy forest, a flurry of deadly thrusts and whirling parries, each so engrossed in the duel that the rest of the world fell away. His grunt of effort, her growl of passion, the ringing clash of saber on saber and the singing of the Force in their veins.

The blade in his hand continued to shriek its inhuman cry, but the longer he wielded the saber, the more its scream fed him strength. 

It acted as a catalyst and a conduit, igniting deep swells of dark emotion in him and concentrating them into a raw power he had never felt before. Fear for his father exploded into fury, but it didn’t stop there. 

She was here, right in front of him, the source and instigator of so many sleepless nights, so many days wondering if the ache in his heart would ever go away, and he wasn’t just angry with her. In that moment, in the red light of her saber, in the midst of the crystal's scream, in the melee of battle, he could almost believe he _hated_ her. 

Once more the blades collided, but this time he had her. Their eyes met, and time slowed. For a suspended moment, the bond between them opened fresh, and they weren’t enemies— just a hurt boy and a terrified girl.

His push against her slowed as his anger started to fade, the keening of the kyber crystal in his hands quieting.

Kira’s wide eyes searched his, and she said in soft plea, “Ben!”

At the sound of his name on her lips, Ben’s heart threatened to burst out of his ribcage, and for just a moment, he relented.

The vulnerability in her face vanished, and she kicked his knees out from under him, grabbing his hair in her hand and yanking his head back harshly as he fell, exposing the tender skin of his neck before leveling his own saber at his throat for all to see.

* * *

**-earlier-**

“I have _several_ questions,” Poe began, furious, rounding on Ben. “First: why in the seven hells does she want _you?”_

Ben had to tiptoe lightly around this. His wildly inappropriate and uncontrollable connection with the Supreme Leader of their sworn enemy was a problem, he knew that, but if he could leverage it to the Resistance’s advantage, then at least he had to try.

“They don’t know my mom’s gone,” Ben explained quietly, dodging the real question and trying to skew the narrative to fit. “I bet they want to use me. Trick me into getting caught, as a blow to her.”

Grief rippled through the brief silence that followed.

“I… could see that,” Poe agreed, subdued.

“If I’m the bait… it’s a risk, but one worth taking if we captured Kira,” Ben pointed out.

“Okay, then,” Poe bit out, his sarcasm back in full. “Here’s my second question: how can we trust this? It’s the worst plan I’ve ever heard in my life,” he continued, throwing up his hands. “And I’ve come up with some bad plans in my day. What if it’s some kind of trap within a trap… within a trap? Stars, this is ridiculous. I _don’t like it.”_

Ben sighed and rubbed his temple. “I don’t think it is. We have to assume there’s unrest in the ranks. There’s been an upheaval in leadership… there are probably people who want Kira Ren gone.” Ben didn’t have to assume; he’d heard it from the source herself. But none of the people present could know _that._

“You can’t guarantee that, Ben!” Poe threw back, his voice rising. “It’s too big of a risk.”

It nearly killed him to say it out loud, fully aware how close he was to showing all his cards, but Ben forced himself to do it. “It’s not as big a risk as you think. She won’t hurt me.”

The absolute disbelief on every face present would, at any other time, have been comical.

Ben lied through his teeth. “If they want me badly enough to try a stunt like this… she won’t do it. She won’t kill me.”

* * *

**-present-**

He could hear her ragged breathing behind him, pain and fear-laced adrenaline still coursing through her.

Extinguishing Kira’s blade, and blessing the absence of that horrifying scream, he threw it to the ground, hoping the action would buy him a little distance between the white-hot saber and his skin.

Poe’s voice rang out in command. “We know you won’t do it, Ren! Put it down!”

Kira struggled against the order, still unwilling to concede the fight, inching the blade closer to Ben’s neck in defiance. The action singed him just inside the hollow of his jaw, and Ben cried out involuntarily, the smell of his burning flesh floating up to him.

She flinched and jumped back, extinguishing the blade and releasing Ben, but now her bluff had been well and truly called.

Ben threw out a hand and immobilized her, ignoring the concern for him and panic that bled through their bond.

Several fighters stepped forward to clap their own Force dampening bindings on her wrists.

She was livid, pale and trembling with rage as she was pushed forward by the two men, and Ben actively avoided the accusatory stare she leveled at him.

Pressing a hand gingerly to the shallow burn on his neck, Ben trotted back to Poe.

“You were right. She wouldn’t hurt you. But… why?” Poe asked in between orders to the remaining troops to collect the wounded.

“Gut feeling. Force thing.” He winced as the movement of his jaw sent a lancing pain through him.

“Huh,” Poe said noncommittally. “Let’s get some bacta on that. And you!” He said, pointing to a random pilot. “Go catch Rose before she gets too far!”

Ben didn’t need to see Kira to feel the searing glare she directed at his retreating back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey- our beloved feral sand gremlin.
> 
> Ben- our soft scholar, but when pushed a troubled demon.


	6. Chapter 6

There was little that could prepare someone to see the full strength of the First Order on display. Even from where Finn stood at attention with his platoon, he could see the endless rows of the stormtrooper ranks, a sea of white against the polished durasteel floor of the biggest hangar the _Resurrector_ had to offer. And this was only one Star Destroyer’s crew.

About two sentences into Hux's speech, Finn stopped listening and started panicking.

“You are here today to bear witness to a betrayal of the highest degree. Kira Ren has committed treason against the First Order, and has died for her crimes.”

The rest of the gutter-swill the general would go on to rant about didn’t matter. It would be the ego stroking and propagandizing typical of a leadership overhaul in a tyranny like the First Order. Finn could recognize a coup when it occurred, however much they tried to sell it as something different.

Finn was sure of only one thing—that this was the moment he had been waiting for.

The new Supreme Leader carried on for a while about the consequences of deception and some new glorious purpose, but inside Finn’s helmet his brain whirred like a motor gear. Shifts in power were destabilizing, and would be a blow to the morale of the crew. Exactly how many Supreme Leaders would troopers be expected to serve under? What was the point, if they all kept dying or disappearing?

Troopers were conditioned to obey authority, no questions asked. But if that authority was nothing more than a façade for power-grabbing warmongers? It was a chance to expose the inner workings of the machine to the people it enslaved, to reveal the cracks in its veneer of control and might.

It was time to stoke the embers.

Back in the barracks, Finn’s squad took to their bunks, gossiping as they removed their helmets and settled into casual clothes.

“Bet he offed her himself, the great ginger slimeball,” Blaze said nonchalantly, designation DR-8989, as he clambered up to his mattress.

“I think she jumped ship,” stated Raushyr, or KB-1820, in his usual pensive way.

“Yeah, no way she’s dead,” Tic affirmed, fiddling with the adjusters on his helmet, his fingers dancing over the small dials and switches. RM-4564 was always fidgeting.

“Kriffin’ bogwitch. Always was a loony,” Blaze chimed.

Tic chuckled. “Yeah, glad to see _her_ gone.”

“How many more ‘Supreme Leaders’ are we going to have to go through? I sure as hell don’t want to be stuck with Hux in charge,” Finn said, already planning how best to execute the conversation that was sure to follow.

Heads were hung low. This was a good sign—Finn had been banking on that low morale.

“Doesn’t matter who’s number one anyway, still gonna tell us to point and shoot and we’ll have to do it.” Blaze had his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.

“What if we didn’t?” Finn asked quietly.

The silence was immediate and oppressive, and even Tic’s nervous fingers stilled.

TZ-1719 swung around to fix Finn with a stare as severe as her tightly pulled-back hair, looking every inch the authoritative squad-leader that she was.

“What?” Blaze shot back, rolling over to look down at him from his bunk.

“What if we didn’t do what they told us to do? We don’t have to point and shoot just because they say so.” What Finn was saying was paramount to treason, and could earn all of them public executions if mentioned to the wrong person. His palms began to sweat.

“Are you short-circuiting?” Tic said, eyes wide. “They’d kill us on the spot. Or worse, recondition us!”

A chorus of agreement echoed around the cramped quarters.

“They can’t recondition _all_ of us,” Finn offered in rebuttal, keeping his cool. He knew the points of debate he had to make; it was just a matter of helping his squad-mates get there along with him.

“Five troopers? Of course they could,” Tic argued, his hands starting to twitch again.

“No, I mean… all of us,” Finn persevered, looking at each trooper in turn. “There’s way more of us on this ship than there are of them. You all saw that up there in the hangar.”

“What are you saying?” TZ-1719 prompted him, neither accusing nor dismissive, but Finn detected a flicker of interest in her eyes.

Finn shrugged. “What I’m saying is, we’re not droids or clones. We have a choice. We can take what they give us or we can _do_ something about it.” He gave them a moment to digest it all, and noted the varying shades of disbelief and surprise on every face there.

“The captain’s going to have our heads for this—!” Tic started in a panic.

“No, he’s right,” TZ-1719 interjected. “If we did it together… they couldn’t stop us.” It was dawning on her, the truth of it. “What if it worked? I would give anything to get off this stupid ship. I wasn’t born a trooper and I don’t want to die one.” Her eyes met Finn’s and he saw determination there. Maybe even hope. “I’m in.”

“The only way to win is if everyone’s on board. If we’re not united, it’ll fall apart,” Finn recited what Leia had taught him to say all those weeks ago. “So, who’s in charge around here?”

“Captain Karr,” Blaze growled, as if it was a loathsome truth, but an obvious one at the same time.

“No, I know that,” Finn rushed. “Who do you _trust?”_

Raushyr, who had been a silent observer from the start, finally spoke up with perfect conviction, “Tee-Zee.”

All heads nodded in agreement, Tic begrudgingly joining in.

Finn had known this answer from the start, he just needed for them to realize it. He had been watching his squad from the day he had infiltrated their ranks, noting who they went to with their problems and questions, and also that TZ-1719 was always fair and willing to help. Leadership material. It was why she had been named squad-leader in the first place.

Finn surveyed the room, deadly serious, and nodded as well. “You’ll follow her?”

“ ’Course,” Blaze said immediately, hopping down from his bunk.

“Yeah,” Tic admitted.

“To the end,” Raushyr said, his eyes on his squad-leader only, and she blushed under his gaze.

“Who’ll stand with us?”

And there it was, the Big Ask, as Leia had called it. The call to arms, the final chance to ensure their unity. All their success hinged on it.

“I will,” Raushyr committed unflinchingly.

“Count me in. Kriffin’ mutiny, this is _good,”_ Blaze said, rubbing his hands together.

“Yeah, I’m in, too,” Tic said quickly, but half-heartedly.

“Then we have work to do,” Finn said.

TZ-1719 turned to him, her eyes shining, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Let’s get to it, then.”

***

There was little that could prepare someone to see their father dying in a med-bay.

Bacta could only do so much, the doctor had told Ben after pulling him out of the way of the various medi-droids scooting around and adjusting the medical equipment that currently kept Han Solo alive.

Ben had left soon after.

As if in a fog, Ben had sought the privacy of his quarters, barely registering the walk there or any of the people he passed. The surprise capture of the Supreme Leader had created a buzz among the Resistance members, but the hum of excitement was all lost on him.

Time passed after Ben had sat down on his too-small bed in silence, but he couldn’t have guessed just how much. Numbness had wrapped around him like a cloak, dulling his senses, and he briefly wondered why he didn’t feel… anything, when the bond opened wide.

How in the galaxy their connection could have activated with Kira bound by a dampening containment shield was beyond him, even if he had the ability to process thought at a pace faster than a mud-sloth. All he could do for the time being was look at her.

The once-mighty Kira Ren was defeated in every way. Her form was bathed in the blue light of the energy field, stark shadows throwing into relief her slumped body, held up only by her cuffs.

She coughed wetly and almost gagged on a lobule of bloody phlegm before she spat it out on the ground, each cough shooting pain through her ribcage, the reverberations of which sliced through their bond. Ben winced with her, the question _how?_ still knocking on the door of his mind even as he repressed the urge to rise and go to her. He felt her desperation to breathe, how each cough cost her dearly, and concern for her threatened to cloud his judgment.

No one had given _her_ medical treatment, apparently, and from the bruise on her face, she had been handled roughly after the skirmish on the plains.

The quiet lingered between them, stiff and full of mutual resentment.

“You did this to yourself, you know,” Ben finally said.

She pulled together enough strength to bite back, “Switch off, Solo,” but it brought on another coughing fit, and she couldn’t manage anything else through the agony blossoming under her ribs. At least one was broken.

When she settled and had inhaled a few ragged breaths, she focused back on him, reading the cloud of emotion simmering just below the surface of the numbness. With the touch of her attention, they began to surface through the fog.

His grief. The anger bubbling right on top of it, the blame he lay on her—that everything was all her fault. He was _furious_ with her, with the path of his life so far. If only she had just _listened_ _,_ if only she had come with him, if only she hadn’t fought back, if only...

With every choice and circumstance between them, he should hate her, he _wanted_ to hate her, but not as much as he wanted to reach out and heal her injuries, to hold her gently, to be kind and soft to her—

“Stop,” she begged, her voice breaking.

“No. You need to know what I’ve lost because of _you!”_

“Leave me alone!” she wailed, straining against the cuffs binding her wrists and ankles. Ben’s heart ached to see it.

“My mother died a general in a war that your master started.”

“Stop it!”

“Thousands of innocent lives have died at the hands of your soldiers, your fleet!” Ben’s voice rose in volume. “Entire systems have been wiped off the map just for a show of power—!”

She snarled, writhing in her restraints.

“And now, my father is wasting away in a med-bed because you _wouldn’t surrender without a fight!”_

“What?” she asked, eyes wide.

“You shot my dad.” Grief, newly unburied, brimmed over, tears welling in his eyes.

She wilted. A new pain crossed over to him, the memory of her fear, how she hadn’t planned for any of this, that this wasn’t what she wanted—

Her suffering on top of his own was too much for Ben to bear, and yet not enough. He needed her to feel it deeper. To drive it home and make it hurt for her in all the ways he now suffered.

“Do you know why you were Snoke’s apprentice?” he asked, but received no response. “Luke Skywalker found you first.” Her gaze flicked up to him in surprise. “He felt your power, but left you for Snoke.”

Horror dawned within her.

“All Luke saw was your darkness.” Ben struggled for control over his voice, fighting through the burn at the back of his throat. “I thought I saw light in you. I thought you wanted…” 

He swallowed, and couldn’t bring himself to say _‘ me.’_

“I thought you wanted something else, something more. I see now… I was wrong.”

Even with the dampening cuffs, even through the containment shield, the Force rippled in the wake of her agony. Fury melded with sorrow, and at the center of the violent storm—fear for all she was about to lose.

He felt it all, then closed the bond between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> REBELLION! 
> 
> And sad Ben and Kira. My poor space babies. 
> 
> (╥﹏╥)


	7. Chapter 7

The Force-dampening bindings on Kira’s wrists left her senses blunted, but the silence and darkness of her cell pressed in on her all the same.

It was finally done, then. Every ounce of power and control she had scraped together by sheer force of will had slipped through her fingers, and she was left with nothing. Even her life was forfeit—in what galaxy would the Resistance permit her to live, after everything that had been done at the hands of the First Order?

Kira let her mind go quiet, waiting for the telltale marching of boots that would herald the inevitable tribunal and execution.

But, it wasn’t the heavy footfalls of rebel soldiers that pierced the darkness.

Soft steps echoed down the hallway leading to the small holding area, and when her visitor stepped into the pale light of the containment shield, Kira gasped.

The wizened female from Takodana. Kira’s eyes widened, her heart racing as she recalled the visions she had seen in the bowels of the castle-like cantina, the terror she had felt. The kind curiosity the little life-form now stepping toward her had shown back then.

“I remember you, too, child.” Her eyes, magnified a hundred-fold by her goggles, roamed over Kira, and she clucked her tongue. “Well. Now _I_ know who you are.” She lifted the goggles up and moved closer, continuing to examine Kira. “But it seems that you do not.”

There was nothing to say, so Kira dropped her eyes and waited. Answer enough, it seemed.

Bringing an orange finger to her chin, she continued. “This is the wrong question. We shouldn’t be asking who you are… but who you _could_ be.” Closing her eyes, she softly hummed. “The light inside you. It’s always been there.”

Kira grimaced. It stung, coming so soon on the heels of what Ben had thrown at her.

“It calls to you still.”

Now Kira met her knowing gaze, and the tears came unbidden, rolling down her cheeks.

The woman nodded to herself. “The choice is yours. To listen to it, to let it guide you.” She sighed. “And to stay here is only death.”

With deft fingers, she punched a few buttons on the outside of Kira’s cell, powering down the shield. Kira slumped to the ground, her wrists no longer held up by the blue beams, and dragging herself up to sitting, she regarded her rescuer.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

Opening the cell door on squeaking hinges, the little woman entered and held out a hand to Kira. Unsure at first what to do, Kira hesitantly took it.

She stepped closer and brushed a tear from Kira’s cheek before lifting her chin gently.

“Dear child. I see your eyes. Your choice cannot be made in a cell. You must go.”

“I have nowhere to go,” Kira murmured, voice tight with emotion.

“You may find answers with the Nightsisters of Dathomir. You will be safe with them.”

She shook her head, confused. “Dathomir? In the Outer Rim?”

“There is a ship waiting for you in the south hangar, but you must go quickly. Here,” she explained, placing Kira’s lightsaber into her hand.

The weight of it in her palm gave her new strength, and a fresh wave of incredulity she pushed aside. She knew this was her last hope to survive.

Rising was difficult, but she fought through the pain lancing through her ribs. A well-placed kick during her capture had probably broken at least one, but Kira didn’t have the luxury of accommodating for injury.

The little woman helped as much as her petite form allowed, and Kira hobbled along. Soon the hangar opened wide before them, only the running night lights illuminating the space.

“This one,” the woman instructed, guiding Kira to a red-striped long-distance cruiser near the entrance.

With effort and a few deep breaths through the pain, Kira managed to scramble into the cockpit and began strapping herself in, but stopped to level one last glance down at the woman.

“May the Force be with you, child. Now, go!” was all she said with a wave.

Kira obeyed. Punching in the coordinates for Dathomir and waiting for the computing drives to finalize hyperspace calculations, she prayed to the stars that somehow, despite everything, she would survive all this.

***

News of Kira Ren’s escape erupted like a volcano the next morning.

The compound was immediately placed on lockdown and a team dispatched to comb the base, only to find an empty cell and a single missing starfighter. No one was pleased to learn of it.

Least of all Ben.

The emergency meeting rapidly devolved into several splintered shouting matches, and it was only with great effort and a good deal of banging on the central holo-console that Poe wrangled the council back to order.

“We need to discuss _options,”_ Poe pleaded with them.

“A disaster of this magnitude warrants immediate evacuation,” a Mon Calamari voiced in displeasure.

“Ren was betrayed by her own people. She wouldn’t go back to them,” someone from the back piped up.

“She might, if she’s selling intel!”

“Where are the guards? They must be questioned.”

“They have already been detained, Admiral.”

“You implicate one of our own?”

“She must have had help from the inside!”

Once again the meeting threatened to spiral out of control.

“Order!” Poe shouted. “The investigation is ongoing! We need to decide what our next course of action—”

“You, Solo!” a squad leader said loudly.

Ben jumped, startled from his brooding.

“You have the benefit of a perception that few of us do. What do you believe has happened?”

He floundered. If only he knew. The first question on his mind had been how she could have escaped without him sensing it, and now that he finally had an opportunity to prove himself useful to the Resistance, it shamed him that he couldn’t rise to the occasion.

A hush had settled on the room, and Ben felt the weight of their expectations. But he didn’t have answers.

“I didn’t sense anything,” he finally admitted.

The disappointment was palpable.

“Even a Force-user doesn’t know! None of this makes sense!”

“Everyone is a suspect now. We have to assume the worst, that there was help from the inside.”

He could nearly hear the mental gears spinning across the room, and several gazes flicked over to Ben.

A whisper floated in the air. “... found him pod-racing, I heard. Under a Hutt’s thumb on some rock in the Outer Rim.”

More heads turned to look at him.

“How was it, _exactly,_ that you knew the Supreme Leader wouldn’t hurt you during the ambush?” asked one of the admirals who had heard his vague explanation during their plan to capture Kira.

Ben looked to Poe for help, but Poe only shrugged. He was just as curious, and Ben’s prior answer of _gut-feeling_ would most likely be deemed unsatisfactory.

His mouth went dry.

“Kira Ren and I… have fought in the past. Several times.” He searched for what to say next.

_She may or may not have feelings for me. Or used to, anyway._

_I thought she might have some good left in her._

_She hasn’t been able to kill me before._

None of them were plausible explanations, and nothing the gathered crowd would believe.

“I… I could tell she wanted me alive.”

“The question still stands, young Solo,” the admiral demanded. _“Why?”_

It was suddenly difficult to breathe. Knowing full well that his innocence was in the balance, and that no matter what he said now would make a difference in implicating him in the crime, he could only say, “I don’t know.”

“That’s not enough, boy,” someone growled from the front.

“I didn’t help her escape,” Ben fought back, anger rising to his defense.

“We need a plan of action _now,”_ Poe interceded. “We’ll find out how she escaped later. What we have to focus on is the safety of the Resistance.” To Kaydel, he said, “Sound the alarm. I’m ordering an emergency evacuation of the base. We’ll broadcast our next destination on secure channels shortly.” He nodded to Kaydel once more, and she slammed down the emergency button.

Blaring alarms sounded, and everyone rushed to file out of the room, but just as Ben was about to exit, Poe caught his arm and held him back.

Over the siren, Poe yelled, “You owe us an explanation.”

Ben yanked his arm away. He was out of options and out of time.

“I don’t have one.”

Poe shook his head in disappointment, his shoulders sagging. “Ben, you know we can’t have this kind of controversy on our hands. Maybe you could… disappear. Just until everything settles down.”

Ben began to tremble with rage. After everything he had done, his family had sacrificed for this organization, after how hard he had trained, how much he had tried to help, this was the thanks he received. It made his blood boil, and his heart burned inside him.

Suddenly, Poe was struggling to swallow, his hands grabbing at his neck.

As quickly as it had come, the rage left Ben in a rush when he saw the fear in Poe’s face.

Poe coughed and took in a few lungfuls of breath, and the realization of what had just happened hit Ben.

Poe’s hand flew to the blaster at his hip, his eyes narrowing, and he took a few steps backward to put distance between them.

“No, I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry, I—”

“I admired your mother. I trusted her with my life, and that’s the only reason I’m talking to you right now and not blasting a hole in your chest. You need to leave. Now. I don’t care how. And if you come back, we will shoot on sight.”

It was as if an abyss had opened up beneath Ben, threatening to swallow him whole.

He would never be able to take that back.

So he ran.

Pushing through the swarms of people heading to the flight decks, Ben dashed to his quarters, throwing his meager belongings into a satchel. Faced with the question of how to leave, his thoughts turned to his father.

Han would be taken to a medical frigate. They always had extra personnel, plus functional ships instead of escape pods in the event of an on-board emergency. He’d board with Han, then make a break for it.

In the chaos of evacuation, no one batted an eye when Ben boarded the vessel.

He was unfamiliar with the ship, so it took him a few minutes to locate the wing where his father was, but once he found it he sat down heavily in a chair next to Han’s bed.

Resting his head in shaking hands, Ben tried to breathe, incapable for the moment of anything more. The implications of his total loss of control hovered somewhere outside his head. If he tried to parse them out right then, he would fall apart.

Through the grating on the floor, he felt the rumble of engines igniting and the rattle of lift off.

Ben had maybe another thirty minutes or so before they reached the closest hyperspace lane and the computations for the fleet would be completed. He had to escape before then, somehow, but for the moment he was frozen in place.

Han’s weak voice cut through Ben’s panic.

“Hey, kid.”

The shaking of the frigate must have woken him up from his doze.

Ben couldn’t bring himself to look at his father, only nodding in greeting.

“Damn mess we got ourselves into, eh?”

Han didn’t even know the half of it, and Ben could only give him a half-hearted smile.

“Doc says I’m stabilized for now.”

The last two words hit Ben strangely, and he finally found the courage to look up at his father.

A jab of grief lanced through Ben’s heart to see Han so reduced, so weak. The man he had looked up to for so long, and then rejected for even longer.

“Says I’d need to be half-machine if I want to keep kicking around.”

There’s something in Han’s voice that tells Ben what he’s about to say is important.

“I’ve seen what that looks like, though. I don’t think it’s for me.” He tried to play it off jokingly, giving a small shrug, as though his continued existence and health was more of a fashion statement than anything else. Only Han could joke in the face of death. 

“I’ve lived a good life,” he continued, but the more he spoke, the more he struggled. It was impossible to tell if it was because he was weakening or becoming emotional. “Been a hero, seen a few things. Made some mistakes, too.”

Ben swallowed, a well of his own emotion filling him up, anticipating and dreading Han’s next words.

“But I… I think I’m ready.”

“No,” Ben choked out, extending his hand, but only grasping the thin fabric on the bed. “No, Dad, I—”

Han reached out and touched Ben’s cheek softly, his face full of memory.

“I know,” he said, his voice low. His hand dropped back to the bed, the effort costing him a great deal. “Go save the galaxy. It’s what your mother would have done.”

Ben’s heart split along the fault-lines scored into the surface over the past few hours, sobs wrenching out of him, his grief rolling over him in waves.

But the window of escape was closing in on him. Falling to his knees, he grabbed his father’s hand and brought it to his forehead, a last apology.

“May the Force be with you, kid,” Han breathed as he gave Ben’s hand a squeeze in return.

Ben had to leave. Through the blur of tears he stumbled out of the wing and made it to the small landing dock in the frigate.

No one was around, except the droid responsible for the hangar hatch, which protested against Ben’s instructions.

“Sir, the time it would take to do so would make it impossible to board another vessel in time before the fleet enters—”

“Just do it,” Ben commanded.

It complied after a moment of more grumbling, and Ben booked it to the small transport vessel and safely exited the hangar, weaving between the tangle of spacecraft convening to make the jump to hyperspace as one fleet.

Several tried to hail him, probably to inform him that he was headed in the wrong direction, but Ben ignored them all, and without warning they all stopped abruptly. Poe’s doing, probably.

As soon as he had broken free of the group, Ben set the ship to autopilot and retreated to the tiny cargo hold. He needed to think.

Where in the galaxy could he go?

The hum of the engines helped calm him, a white noise that made focusing easier, but his mind was blank.

The Outer Rim was crawling with bounty hunters, and it was reasonable to assume there was an outstanding bounty on his head from the events on Tatooine.

Any First Order controlled territory was out of the question, but now even Resistance-friendly systems were off-limits. Poe had made that abundantly clear.

What a cosmic joke it all was. His legacy, his lineage of prestige, his Force ability… all a waste, gone like a vapor in the wind because of a fit of anger.

A _presence_ in the Force dawned in his mind, and Ben whipped out his saber, its powerful thrum belying the shaking of his hands.

But the entity that appeared before Ben was calm, soothing, at total dissonance with Ben’s frayed nerves, the soft blue light radiating from him hinting at the ethereal.

A Life Essence. A Transcendent.

The ghostly stranger threw Ben a rueful smile. Ben switched off his lightsaber.

“Who are you?” Ben asked, his voice trembling.

“Anakin Skywalker. It’s nice to finally meet you.” The spirit grinned in genuine happiness.

“You… you’re—”

“Your grandfather.”

“Darth Vader?”

Anakin’s smile fell, and he looked away.

The weight of all that needed to be said between them settled heavily on Ben.

“I’m not proud of that name. Or the things I did when it was mine,” the ghost explained, passion underscoring each word.

Ben shook his head, trying to come to grips with the situation. “What are you doing here?”

His posture shifted, voice lowering as he regarded Ben with grave intensity. “There are things you need to know.”

All that Ben had ever heard about Darth Vader—the cruelty, the coldness—was undercut by this image of a man who, if he hadn’t been dead, or ‘one with the Force,’ or however one chose to look at it, could have been Ben’s age. 

The night Ben had discovered his real lineage, not his mother’s adopted heritage or his uncle’s heroism, but that of the most feared Sith lord in the galaxy, was the night Ben had run from his family. Cut the ties that bound him to all the names that had come before, the legacies casting shadows from the past and threatening to darken his own future.

Of all the times Ben had faced danger, of all the hopeless days and fearful nights, _now_ was the time that this kind-eyed former Sith appeared before him, to tell him something _important_ and to throw Ben’s entire understanding of his family into chaos.

“Well, you have great timing,” Ben spat at him.

“My mistakes led me down a path of darkness.”

Scoffing, Ben looked away.

“You need to know what happened so you don’t make the same mistakes. Something’s coming, Ben. A trial I failed.”

“Another Skywalker failure coming back to haunt me. Perfect.”

Anakin took a bracing breath. “When I was a Jedi Knight, I was brought in front of the Ancient Ones to be tested.”

 _Ancient Ones._ That tugged at a deeply buried memory of his years under Uncle Luke’s tutelage. Grudgingly, Ben gave Anakin his full attention.

“They were living embodiments of the Force, three of them— the Light, the Dark, and the Balance. Daughter, Son, and Father, all living together on a planet called Mortis.”

Now the memories began to surface. Luke had spoken about them solely in theoretical terms, but if Anakin was telling the truth, if they were _real,_ Ben needed to listen closely.

His grandfather watched Ben as if expecting disbelief, or some sort of disdain, but Ben only nodded at him to continue.

“They gave me a test, to choose the Dark and save my master from death, or to choose the Light and save my padawan. The thing was, I didn’t have to choose. I saved them both. I was the Chosen One, promised to bring balance to the Force.”

Ben’s eye twitched, but remained silent. There was a resonance to what Anakin was saying, a _feeling_ in the Force ringing right and true.

“I could save them both because I _was_ both.” He finally looked away from Ben, folding his hands in his lap. “I did terrible things in the name of the Dark side, and tried to do even worse.” He winced at his own memory. “But the Jedi never had the right of it either. It’s a fallacy, thinking there can ever be one without the other. Light without darkness.” 

Anakin paused in thought, and Ben attempted to wrap his mind around what he was saying.

“I was trapped in the lie. I gave into the darkness, trying to save what I loved… and it only ended in pain.” His voice was full of emotion, struggling to regain composure. “But I was saved by the love of another. I never got to know my son, or my daughter, because I didn’t love my wife as I should have. I loved her from the dark, as if she was only mine to keep.” 

Now the tears started to roll, and Ben got caught in the emotion, tears welling in his eyes as well. 

“I would give anything to have her back, to know and love the family I never got to be a part of.”

Ben realized that he was part of that family.

“Don’t give in to fear, Ben. It will destroy everything you hold close. You have to let go of yourself. It’s better to die than to kill in fear.”

The burning in his throat made it impossible to reply to his grandfather.

Anakin nodded and stood. “If you’re looking for refuge, go to Mustafar. My old fortress is there, as well as some of the answers you seek. May the Force be with you.” 

Just as his image grew fainter, a small, wistful smile appeared on his face. “I’m glad I got to meet you.”

And then he faded away, leaving Ben and his tears alone in the empty cargo hold of an escape pod.

***

Rose’s cell was empty.

In the upheaval after the Supreme Leader’s ‘death,’ Finn and TZ-1719 had been pulled in a thousand directions, both in their duties to the First Order and in their plotting for insurrection, but cell block 4070 never left Finn’s mind for long.

He had stopped by to check in on her before the next phase of his plan unfolded, but now fought through a panic that threatened to choke him, forcing himself to take deep, even breaths and think it all through.

An execution would have been made public, so that was unlikely. She might have been transferred to another ship, or just moved to a different, more populated cell block to create ease of efficiency, but he felt that he would have known about that from his prior assignment to the block.

Escape would have been next to impossible, but not completely out of the realm of possibility— but no alarms had been raised, no urgent announcements made about an escapee. 

Finn bit his lip so hard it drew blood. He had to _think._

Did Rose have something to do with Kira Ren’s betrayal? If Ren really had chosen to defect, a buffer in the form of a returned rebel prisoner might have been a viable option to prove her good intentions to the Resistance. The timing of their disappearances, the lack of fanfare… it couldn’t be just coincidence. And, if that was the case, maybe Rose was safely back in the arms of the Resistance. 

The thought of Rose among friends and allies settled on his heart, and something deep inside him echoed back to him a peacefulness that calmed his nerves.

Wherever she might be, the Force was with her, and that’s all he needed to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maz helps Kira escape! An exiled Ben meets his grandfather at last! Finn loves Rose!
> 
> Longer chapter--thanks for reading! 😊💕


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo I'm an idiot and accidentally posted a random future chapter early, and I know AO3 is going through maintenance so readers might not have even gotten a notification email about me posting, but just in case any of you did, here is the next chapter a little early to make up for my mistake. 😅

Kira soon realized why only those with a mettle of durasteel would brave the descent to Dathomir. Pockets of vapor rocked her cruiser with turbulence as she approached the scorched land, a headwind almost sending her into a nosedive twice as she struggled to maneuver around the vines covering most of the planet’s surface.

Finally finding a stretch of open ground to land her spacecraft, she clambered out of the cockpit, coughing on the red dust kicked up by the engines. Drooping bulbous pods hung from the vines above, and she took in her surroundings with an air of foreboding. 

Heaving a great sigh, she leaned against the hull of her ship, the exhaustion she had been keeping at bay hitting her with all the sudden force of a TIE collision. 

She had no idea what to do next.

Before she had time to make up her mind, a ghostly green light filtered into the burnt air, coalescing into the form of a middle-aged female. A crimson hood covered most of her pale white skin, but Kira saw the faint tattoos of the famed Nightsisters along the crest of her brow and cheeks.

“You trespass on sacred burial ground,” her voice rang out, full of authority and laced with unfamiliar power.

Kira swallowed. “I was sent here.”

“By whom?” the apparition scoffed.

“A… little orange woman,” Kira floundered, feeling a damn fool. In the haste of her escape, it had not occurred to her to ask for her rescuer’s name. 

“This planet is a tomb. You will leave, or you will die.”

Kira was too weak to fight with this person, let alone argue her benign intentions. Despair settled around her like a suffocating blanket. 

The Nightsister tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, as if sensing something Kira could not, then approached her, extending a long white finger to touch Kira’s forehead. 

Heart pounding with fear, Kira accepted that this was her last moment of life, and surrendered to the Nightsister’s light touch. With a gong-like ringing that filled her mind, the world abruptly went dark and Kira knew nothing more.

***

Kira’s consciousness fluttered to wakefulness, and she shook her head to clear it. When she tried to move, she almost screamed in frustration to find that once again, her hands and feet were bound.

A single sob ripped out of her chest, the toll of emotional and physical fatigue pressing down on her lungs and throat. 

“You are awake.”

Flinching at the voice, Kira whipped her head around from where she was laying on a rock floor. The Nightsister from before, her hood now removed, sat a span away, a small fire’s flickering glow casting her in deep shadow.

No sunlight, no movement of breeze swept through the room, and yet, illuminated by the flames, her captor’s skirts rippled slowly as if in a light wind. As if she existed on a different plane, but had materialized here.

“I was going to kill you, but I felt something strange.” Now standing, the woman paced, contemplative. “You, darkling, are only half of a whole.”

Kira honed in on her with laser-like focus. 

“Hmm,” she murmured at the spark of understanding in Kira’s eyes. “You appear to know this already.” She continued to pace, tapping her chin. “But not the full truth. Who, or what, is your other half?” Rounding on Kira, she kneeled down next to her. “But the better question is,  _ where?” _

The first spark of fear ignited in Kira’s belly, although not for her own safety—for Ben’s. How could this woman possibly know of their bond? 

“So, you do know.”

Kira strained against the heavy rope binding her.

“You are powerful. And, you are only the half,” the Nightsister shook her head wonderingly. “If you know of your other, why are you alone?”

This woman’s intentions regarding both her and Ben remained a mystery, and Kira resolved to take the knowledge to her grave, if that should be the fate that awaited her here. 

Closing her eyes, the woman lifted her chin and inhaled deeply, relishing whatever it was she sensed. “The hand of fate is upon you. I feel its weight. And you feel it, too.”

A single tear rolled down Kira’s cheek, and the Nightsister reached out to wipe it away. Rubbing the caught tear between her fingers, her eyes unfocused, her expression far away.

“You are lost.”

Kira barely stifled another sob.

“And you have come here…?” Again the woman lost herself in thought, but then trained her gaze on Kira. “Well. Do you mean this place harm?”

Feebly, Kira replied, “No.”

With the flick of her hand, Kira’s bindings dissolved in a puff of green light.

“Then we must discover why one half of a soul has sought me out, for I fear even you do not know.” Moving to exit the room, she halted and looked over her shoulder at Kira, who now sat up and rubbed her sore wrists. “Come. My name is Merrin, and we have much to discuss.”

***

The food Merrin set before Kira smelled and looked strange, but having survived on less and poorer fare, she dug in heartily. 

Seated in a kitchen of sorts, the fire in the hearth warmed Kira’s bones, but she remained wary. The woman’s clothing and hair still undulated in that eerie, cosmic wind, and she had to wonder what kind of power this person had embraced to appear so otherworldly. 

“Do you know who we were?” Merrin asked, her long fingers steepled under her chin.

The use of past tense hit Kira oddly. “Were?”

“An evil man slaughtered my people in the Clone Wars. I am the last.”

In response to the original question, Kira nodded solemnly and said, “The Nightsisters.”

“What else do you know?”

“Only what I’ve heard from stories. Rumors.”

Merrin’s brows lifted, waiting for Kira to elaborate.

“You… your people… were witches. Drawing your power from arcane places in the Force, that neither the Sith nor the Jedi did.”

“That is both correct and not. We drew our power from the Waters of Life that spring up from the Dathomir’s core. A blessing, a gift from the Winged Goddess. Do you know why we were called the Nightsisters?”

Around a mouthful of food, Kira shook her head and said, “No.”

“The word ‘night’ in Basic means one thing—the opposite of day. In my mother tongue, our word for night,  _ mo’raii _ , refers to unending balance of night and day, of darkness and light, and that one must follow the other in eternal cycle.”

Kira paused her chewing, reflecting on the new information.

Merrin spoke softly, in a tone implying she knew Kira would relate to what she was about to say.

“People fear what they do not understand.” 

Kira’s eyes flicked up to Merrin’s, and she slowly set down the food in her hand. 

“We did not conjure with dark magicks, or worship the realm of the dead.” Mischief lit her eyes. “Although we did not bother to say otherwise. It kept unwanted visitors away.” She paused, studying Kira’s reaction. “We harnessed the power of the light existing within the dark. Does this make sense?”

“I… think so.” But Kira couldn’t help wondering why Merrin was telling her this.

Merrin sat back in her chair, picking at the edges of her robes absentmindedly, then again turning her penetrative gaze on Kira. 

“What is it you seek here?”

“I don’t know,” Kira had to say, her frustration with her own answer rising.

“Who sent you?”

“I don’t know,” Kira said, ever more desperate.

Face clouding over, Merrin wrestled internally with her thoughts. 

“I have… suspicions, but I doubt you are prepared for what it might cost you.”

“What do you mean?”

“A trial, to enter the Cave of Vessels. Few have tried, searching for wisdom, strength. None succeeded.”

At Kira’s expression of confusion, Merrin sighed, but explained. “The Cave of Vessels is a dwelling place of the Winged Goddess. Only the worthy may enter, and she will meet them to bestow… a gift, of some sort. _ Tenat havak’ut _ … ‘a gathering of dreams’, it was said.” She smiled ruefully. “I do not know what that means. Does it mean anything to you?”

She could only shake her head.

“But if not for that, what else do you come for? There is nothing here otherwise, but my fallen sisters and myself.”

A mournful silence passed.

Kira bit her lip. “What happens? When someone tries to enter the cave?”

“They are never seen again.”

“I’m not afraid to die.”

Merrin leaned forward and pinned her with a stare. “There are fates worse than death. You know this.”

“What must I do?”

“There are steps. Rituals. First, you would be purged.”

Grimacing, Kira asked, “Of what?”

“Of deceit.”

“I’m not trying to deceive you—!” 

Merrin lifted her hand to stop her. “No. You must be purged of the lies you tell yourself. Only an unburdened woman can enter the cave.”

“I’ll do it.”

“You may try, darkling. But it is not an easy thing to do.”

“Nothing in my life has ever been easy,” Kira said bitterly.

“I can see that. Tomorrow, then. Meditate, and rest until it is time.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Welcome to the Fen, sword-bearer.”

Unease twisted in Ben’s gut, a constant tension that gripped him from the moment he stepped foot on Mustafar. He had so far kept a cool demeanor on this strange planet with its stranger inhabitants, but as the Alazmec clan leader sitting across from him mentioned his lightsaber, alarms began to ring in Ben’s mind.

The leader regarded Ben through yellow-tinted goggles, a half-dome helmet obscuring his face and roughspun clothes the color of dried mud covering his entire body, but the way he leaned forward, gloved hands on his knees, hanging on Ben’s every word, betrayed his anticipation. 

An unwashed smell permeated the tent, a smoldering fire of moss and twigs between Ben and his host adding a pungent odor to the air.

Ben’s eyes flicked over the rest of the tent, noting the various pots of ironwood saplings set just outside the back flap to receive what dim sunlight illuminated the planet from the twin gas giants flanking it. Sentries stood at both exits.

These life-forms pretended at hospitality, but Ben sensed the truth—they held him hostage.

“We have a guest. We are very happy,” the leader continued in heavily-accented Basic, his voice rasping.

If they believed escorting a stranger directly from his ship to their leader with no explanation whatsoever could be called entertaining a ‘guest’, then sure.

“I’m here to explore the area. I mean no harm to you or your people,” Ben said as a peace offering.

“What do you explore for?” the leader asked, nodding his head.

Ben stalled by taking a deep breath, deciding to keep his purposes to himself. “Answers.”

The leader slapped his knees and craned his neck forward. “And the question?”

“That’s my business,” Ben answered flatly.

The odd creature fell back on his rump and responded in sing-song, as if enjoying a good joke, “Our fen, our business, sword-bearer.” More seriously, he added, “Is it yours?”

Ben knew he referred to the lightsaber clipped at his belt, and regretted not concealing it somewhere else on his person.

“Yes.”

“You made it?”

“My grandfather made it,” Ben said, struggling now to maintain composure.

“Ha!” the leader exclaimed, startling Ben, before reaching up to trace the edge of his own helmet with a finger. The action itself indecipherable, Ben got the gist when the sentries tensed as if on cue.

“We protectors of the Fen know a powerful being when we see it,” he said. “If you seek answers, you seek the One in the Water. She sees all.”

Ben adjusted his seated position, his interest sparked. “Where can I find her?”

Under the shadow of the domed helmet, Ben watched as the leader’s lips slowly spread wide in a toothy smile. “She would have been so happy to meet you.”

The alarms sounding in his mind crescendoed to a roar, and he clenched his fists.

“Where is she?” He needed this information before anything else happened.

“Southern Fen border. Not far.”

“Thank you for your help.” Ben made to stand, hoping against hope they would let him go without a fuss, but the leader stopped him.

“Oh, sword-bearer, won’t you stay? We have so few guests,” the being tilted his head, danger floating underneath his friendly tone.

“I have to go. Now,” Ben said, lacing the words with a threat as he stood to his full height.

“No, you don’t.” There was no attempt at cordiality any more— only a cold command. “You will stay.”

Dread filled him as his hand drifted toward his saber, his heartrate quickening as he sensed growing hostility from the surrounding sentries.

“Let me go in peace, or many of you will die.” Only half a bluff. Ben wanted nothing more than to escape without bloodshed, but they were leaving him with few options.

The leader rose, too, an unsettling energy radiating from him. “We have prepared this place for you, Blood of the Dark Lord. You have come to us at long last, and here you will stay.”

Weapons flew up, each blaster trained on Ben, and suddenly the tent was packed with clans-people growling and muttering.

“You must see that you are the heir,” the leader explained with increasing fervor. “With you, the Dark Lord may rise again. Your blood… we can use… in the secret places, hidden deep—” He fell off, muttering excitedly in a foreign tongue, hands wringing.

Ben’s fear skyrocketed. They wanted to use his blood to resurrect Darth Vader.

“This is your last warning,” Ben growled, attempting to control the waver of terror in his voice. “Let me go, or I’ll kill you all!”

“You can try, Young Lord,” the leader murmured in amusement, then beckoned to the others.

They descended on Ben as a horde, swarming him from all directions. At first, Ben’s only goal was a hasty retreat and running as hard and fast as he could from these blood-thirsty savages, but the sheer number of them made escape impossible.

Ben hacked and slashed wildly through them, his fear mounting until it overwhelmed him, taking control of his movements as adrenaline pumped through him. There was no time for thoughts or strategy— only action.

He hadn’t wanted to hurt them, but they gave him no choice.

Anger flared to life, his fury amplifying with each downstroke, singing through his blood, pounding in his ears, his saber humming as it tore through their bodies with ease. Nothing short of death stopped them, and despite the bodies left in Ben’s wake, they pursued him in a maddened rage.

Animals. Blindly worshiping a man gone for over thirty years, worshipping his evil power and longing for the day to resurrect it.

Soon, Ben wasn’t just fighting to avoid capture. He struck to kill. 

When he finally arrived at the border of the encampment, his chance to escape, he found it the furthest thing from his mind. All that pulsed through him was anger, disgust, loathing. 

They didn’t deserve to live.

Turning, he strode back through the camp. Each overhead downswing, each forward thrust ended one more vile creature’s existence, ridding the galaxy of the scum that had idolized the darkness in a dead man.

The Force sang around him. It beckoned the darkness within, caressed the raging beast in his chest; it breathed, fanning the flame, consuming him.

And then it was done.

He stilled, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his face. The slain lay scattered around him, their lifeless bodies littering the brittle forest.

A head rose up from the ground.

He threw out his hand to drag the creature to him with the Force, intending to run it through with his blade and snuff out the last of them—

But the body didn’t come.

“Ben?” Kira said, rising up from where she had been laying on the ground, eyes wide and searching. “What—”

_ “You.” _ Ben stomped over to her, his face twisting in a snarl.

Her escape had brought him to this place, this bloodlust, this carnage. It was all her fault.

To her credit, she didn’t flinch, didn’t back down an inch, even as he leered over her. A new rage pulsed through him, the core of which tasted more of hurt than fear.

She stared up at him in defiance, unmoved. Ben swallowed and blinked, his anger blunted by the strength of her resolve.

“They deserved it,” he said around gritted teeth, but now that the dark pounding had lessened, the words felt hollow.

Eyes never leaving his as she shook her head, she frowned. “What are you talking about?”

She couldn’t see the bodies through the bond, he remembered. Only him.

Her eyes widened just a fraction. “What did you do?” she whispered.

He couldn’t think clearly, everything crashing together too fast. “I killed them. I killed them all,” he said in a daze, for the first time processing what he had just done.

Kira’s jaw clenched. “I don’t understand. This isn’t you.”

Using his height, he towered over her.

“You don’t know anything about me,” he breathed.

Paling, she stood her ground. “I know you’re more than this. Than whatever it is you’ve done.”

“What if I’m not?” He meant it to be a challenge, but the tremble in his voice sounded like a plea.

Something akin to sadness filled her eyes, a reaction that seemed to surprise the both of them, and with a deep breath, she looked up at him with shaken disappointment.

“Don’t go this way, Ben.” Her eyes became glassy with tears. “Please.”

Stepping back, he looked at the ground, unable to meet her gaze.

“I’m going to find what’s coming. Before it finds us.”

Without another glance back, he turned southward and walked away.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some sensitive material, including some images of horror and references to the death of a small animal. If you wish to skip this chapter in light of that, please see the notes at the bottom to read a brief summary instead.
> 
> In addition, several references to Part II of this series are made. If you want a refresher, which do include the events concerning the small animal, please see [chapter two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17786270/chapters/42212642) of "The Light to Meet."

The stink of sulphur reached Ben’s nose long before he saw the water.

It echoed the rot in his soul that had begun to fester as soon as he had stomped away from Kira, his throat closing up as he fought back the tears blurring his vision. He had blood on his hands now, innocent lives taken by his saber in anger. Recalling the way the Darkness had stirred in him now only brought on a wave of nausea, the taint of it a black stain, burning him from the inside out. The fear burned, too—fear of walking in the shadow of Darth Vader.

But he trudged on. Now, he truly had nothing left to lose.

Before too long, the trees thinned, and through them Ben could see plumes of steam rising from a pond, thick enough to fog the air. In the middle of the fetid pool Ben could just make out a large rounded mass, and as he stepped closer his stomach clenched at the sight of the massive head of a baby—sleeping or dead, he couldn’t tell—with a wrinkled, long-legged insectoid perched at the crown.

The insect’s mouth opened as he cleared the tree line, spreading wide to reveal rows of jagged teeth, its bulbous eyes blinking languidly.

Ben’s heart hammered in his chest.

“The Heir Apparent approaches me.” The voice, like nails dragging across durasteel, caused him to flinch.

“Mighty Skywalker,” it continued. “Prince of Alderaan, lost son of Rebellion. Always a knight, never a Jedi.”

How in the galaxy every living being on this godsforsaken planet knew his identity escaped him.

“I’ve never claimed titles,” Ben stammered at the monstrosity, pressing on through his fear. “Something’s coming. I need to know what it is and how to defeat it. Can you tell me?”

He hated the vague explanation, but he didn’t have anything else to go on, only Kira’s premonitions.

“It does not come to you. You will go to it.”

Whispers from nowhere sounded in Ben’s mind. Memories, familiar voices.

_“This war won’t be won on a battlefield.”_

_“You and I… our fates are intertwined.”_

_“Why in the seven hells does she want_ you?”

_“Been a hero, seen a few things. Made some mistakes, too. But I… I think I’m ready.”_

_“Don’t give in the fear, Ben… You have to let go of yourself.”_

Then, a new whisper slid into Ben’s head, a deep boom.

_HE WHO IS BOTH BUT BELIEVES HIMSELF NEITHER…_

Ben tensed against the waves of intrusive voices, falling to one knee, his breathing ragged, thoughts racing to keep up. Why dredge up old hurts and new? And what could that possibly mean, ‘is both but believes himself neither’?

Pulling himself together, Ben struggled to stand back up, his legs weak and wobbling.

The creature spoke again, cutting through Ben’s confusion. “Mustafar once burned. From the ash it is reborn, but first it had to die. Do you understand?”

Ben did not. Every ounce of his willpower and focus was directed toward keeping his feet planted before this ‘One in the Water’ in spite of all his instincts screaming at him to run.

But to where? Ben had no other choice, his last thread of hope tied to this _thing_ in front of him.

The eyelids on the baby’s head flew open, enormous cloudy eyes piercing Ben to his core, igniting fresh terror. He stumbled backward as another deep boom slammed into his mind—

_ARE YOU PREPARED TO BURN, PRINCE OF NOTHING?_

The urge to flee howled through him, but he stood his ground and tried to steady his breathing.

Prepared or not, Ben squared his shoulders in decision.

“Yes.”

The baby’s eyes drifted closed, and the insect on top blinked at him. “The fortress on the Gahenn Plains is your birthright. Go and claim what lies beneath.”

Ben dipped his head, hiding his shaking hands. “Thank you.”

“Do not thank me. You go to your grave.”

***

Restless energy pulsed through Kira, sleep now impossible after the connection with Ben had severed. So many questions and so few answers, but she was certain of one thing: something terrible had happened.

Ever since she had captured him, all that time ago, and unwittingly bridged their minds during her interrogation, he had become something of a constant to her. A gentle presence, with careful questions and concern for her. His endearing hesitations, his scholarly curiosity even in the face of danger. Even her memories of him proved a source of warmth and kindness in a life that had known only harshness, but now… he was losing his way.

It tore at her, the desperate need to go to him, wherever he might be and help him, _beg_ him not to fall into the darkness that would swallow him up and snuff out every good thing in him. Like it had done to her.

But she had to see through her work on Dathomir, and she needed Merrin’s help.

When the Nightsister finally came to Kira, she found her pacing.

“You are worried,” Merrin remarked in her infuriatingly neutral tone.

“Let’s go,” Kira muttered, slightly relieved at the prospect of something to take her mind off of Ben, but as she attempted to stride past Merrin, she was stopped by a firm hand to her shoulder.

“Your thoughts are scattered. A purge cannot be performed unless you are focused on nothing else.”

Brushing away her instinctive irritation, Kira nodded. She closed her eyes, willing calmness to wash over her, re-centering her thoughts on the purpose at hand— to prepare to enter the Cave of Vessels, the dwelling place of the Winged Goddess, and perhaps receive whatever mysterious gift awaited her there, if found worthy.

“I’m ready,” she said, lifting her head.

Merrin led her to a nearby low-ceilinged cavern, illuminated only by a single clay pot filled with luminescent green liquid.

At Kira’s questioning look, Merrin explained. “The Waters of Life, from Dathomir’s core. Lay down there,” she ordered, gesturing to a straw mat on the rock floor. “Clear your mind and prepare yourself. This will not be pleasant.”

Obeying, Kira settled herself on the mat, which did little to soften the hardness of the floor pressing into her back.

“Have you gone through this before?” she asked.

“Yes.” Merrin sat down next to the clay pot and mused. “A long time ago.” Her fingers brushed the rim of the pot, a faraway look on her face. “I have not regretted it. Now, close your eyes.”

Merrin’s voice drifted over to her in the darkness behind her eyelids, an incantation.

_"Aishtek kayanum khochet miki’in. Yeye kayadeva.”_

Kira’s body thrummed, as if it were a drum, one pounding beat echoing in her chest. At the second utterance of the chant, another drumming, forceful, pulling and pushing her at the same time toward… somewhere else.

At the third repetition, Kira’s back arched off the floor, an electric volt arcing through every muscle. They spasmed in a wave of pain, and a scream ripped through her throat, but she couldn’t hear it over the roar that howled through her. Every nerve scorched, her eyes opening wide to bright green flames engulfing her.

And just as quickly as it began, it stopped. She still lay on her back, but back in her old quarters aboard the _Resurrector._ Shooting up, she tried to piece together her new reality, rubbing her arms against the chill of the spacecraft, so jarring after the searing heat.

Her labored breathing slowed, each inhale strangely loud in the room. Casting her glance around, she looked for some hint of what she might have to do there, when a skittering sound from the floor interrupted her thoughts.

A small ship-rat common to large vessels approached her, its pink nose wiggling, halting a span away from the bed and sitting on its hind legs, forepaws dangling.

Kira’s stomach sank, and she slid off the bed to sit cross-legged before the rat.

It spoke.

_Why did you hurt me?_

The rat’s words formed in Kira’s mind and twisted an old wound, the dam of memory opening wide. She recalled with startling clarity the day Snoke had ordered her to kill the only friend Kira had ever made in her short life, a little ship-rat just like the one before her now. He told her that compassion made her weak. That weakness could not be tolerated. She had obeyed, lifted her small hand and had clumsily used the Force to squeeze the poor creature to death.

Unable to speak, Kira only shook her head, her throat tight, mourning her lost childhood and the death of her innocence.

From the moment Snoke had snatched her from the wasteland of Jakku, he intended nothing more than to hone her into a blade, a tool for his bidding, her only purpose to kill without question.

And so she had become.

To achieve such strength, she had to sacrifice every good thing offered to her to the Dark side of the Force.

Even Ben’s kindness. _Especially_ his kindness. The soft moments between them, the gentle way he’d spoken to her, looked at her, how she’d only been able to throw them back in his face, to make him suffer, to hurt him, make him bleed. A blade didn’t know how to be sweet and gentle. It only knew how to wound.

Every shade of Ben’s pain sprang to her mind’s eye, wringing more grief out of her already aching heart, each look of hurt reverberating deep within her. Just as it had when, as a child, her little rat friend’s slow death had been a torment, each second of agony shaking her to the core.

 _You hate him,_ the rat said.

“He ruined me,” Kira choked out, fury building at the thought of all that Snoke had done to her.

_No, the boy._

“No, I… I don’t hate Ben.”

_Then why do you hurt him?_

“I don’t mean to. I don’t want to,” she tried to explain. Another wound opened as she realized she didn’t know how to do anything else besides hurt him.

_Like you didn’t want to hurt me._

“I’m so sorry,” Kira gasped as she curled in on herself, unable to hold back the flood of tears.

 _Why did you hurt me?_ the rat repeated its first question.

“I had to.” A pathetic excuse, it seemed to her now.

_Why did you have to?_

“Because…”

Because her master had seen a spark of kindness in a child, and had commanded her to extinguish it with the blood of her only friend.

“…Because I loved you.” She broke, over and over again, a bottomless, endless pain opening up in her chest.

Sobs tore through her, regret and mourning crashing over her like tidal waves, drowning her.

 _You couldn’t keep me,_ the rat said gently, padding over to her and laying a tiny paw on her knee. _You hurt me to save yourself. It’s all right. I forgive you._

How could she shatter like this and still breathe?

Where the rat’s paw had been, now there lay a hand. Ben’s hand. 

Kira flinched and looked up at him, sitting so close to her that she could have reached out and touched him. Her broken heart stuttered in her chest, despite knowing this could only be part of the vision, and she couldn’t stop the sobs still heaving through her. All the things she would say to him raced through her mind. _I’m sorry, I never meant for any of this to happen, please forgive me, I only know how to cause pain, I’ve never suffered more than when I hurt you—_

Ben spoke, his warm, deep voice like a healing balm. “Why do you hurt me?”

It was as if she stood before a dark-tinted pane where she could only faintly view the constellations of her life, every path, every choice that led to this moment, and with a sudden, frightening force, it _cracked._ Thousands of shards flew apart and the vacuum of space pulled her out into the void, into the starlight. For the first time, floating there in a blanket of darkness pierced by silvery light, she saw the truth written in the heavens.

She gasped.

“Because I love you.”

Then she woke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief Summary:  
> \- Ben is remorseful of his brutality, and fears that he is falling into Darth Vader's footsteps.  
> \- Ben speaks with the One in the Water, an oracle that warns him of what is to come and that what he is about to face may cost him his life. He decides to move forward and risk it.  
> \- The oracle tells him about a fortress on the planet that is Ben's by right, and that he will find what he seeks underneath it.  
> \- Rey is worried that Ben may be falling to the Dark Side.  
> \- Rey undergoes the Purge, an ordeal in which she has to confront an old friend whom she hurt and from whom she discovers her own true feelings for Ben--that she loves him.
> 
> Side note, this is the translation of Merrin's incantation: "Here lies a woman who wishes to be purged of the deceit with which she protects herself. Recover her truths."


	11. Chapter 11

Tic skidded into the squad barracks, out of breath and wild-eyed.

“They found it! They’ve located—”

Raushyr bolted out of his bunk and clapped a hand over Tic’s mouth. 

“Wait until the door is shut, bucket-head!” Raushyr hissed at him as he struggled against the restraint.

After the soft _click_ sounded from the door that signaled the lock had been engaged, Raushyr released him, every eye in the room laser-focused on the trooper. Their collective nervous energy almost palpable, they leaned forward in anticipation of the news.

In a harsh whisper, Tic restarted, practically vibrating in agitation. “They found the Resistance base! It’s on Ajan Kloss!”

Their squad leader whipped her head over to Finn, whose palms had gone clammy. With a rush of gratitude for her, Finn recalled the night she had told him with her birth name— _Jannah._ A trooper able to recall their natural name deserved a certain reverence, and to share that information with anyone else could only be taken as a sign of absolute trust.

Jannah trusted Finn, and he could trust her, so he nodded to her in confirmation. Jannah then turned back to Tic. 

“Where did you hear this?”

“My guy in the engine room overheard two lieutenants talking. They’re going to redirect the entire fleet, and now they’re just waiting for all vessels to report in before going into hyperspace together,” Tic relayed, still breathing heavily.

“They want to strike decisively,” Raushyr murmured, almost to himself. “They don’t want a repeat of last time.” 

“But they haven’t told us about plans to deploy. Not that they ever bother to tell us where, but still,” Jannah commented thoughtfully.

“They want to keep it quiet. They’re worried about… spies,” Tic explained, wincing on the last word. “What are we going to do?”

Every gaze darted over to Finn, who swallowed loudly. “This is it. It’s time. We stick to the plan.” 

He mustered up his courage, determined to be the beacon of strength his squad needed. “And we’re lucky, because now we have a little extra time to activate the contact chain.” To Raushyr, he asked, “Is the weapon system control team prepped and ready?”

“Spoke to their squad leader yesterday. They’re on standby.”

To Blaze: “Bomber squadron?”

“Waiting for the order.”

“Engine room?”

“Yeah, yeah, they’re ready,” Tic answered.

Turning once more to Jannah, Finn asked, “Did we get any of the pilots?” 

TIE fighters would be the first wave of attack once the order went out. Without the pilots’ support, the chances of their plan actually working diminished significantly, and the cockpit junkies filling out their ranks tended to be hardheaded, to put it nicely.

Jannah smiled with pride. “We got them.”

Finn breathed out a sigh of relief. “Then we can count on them to help jam the radar, too.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It’s happening, it’s really happening.”

Reaching out to touch his shoulder, Jannah stood and faced her team. “We can do this. Let’s light this bloody place up.”

Blaze let out a wild whoop and raised his fist in the air.

On each face, Finn saw the spark of hope, and recognized instantly that _this_ was Leia’s last mission, to kindle in these young hearts the flames that would set the galaxy on fire.

Now, nothing could stand in their way.

***

Shaking and exhausted, Kira woke from her vision of her old ship and childhood nightmares to find she was still in the primitive cave on Dathomir.

Merrin helped her to her feet and half-carried her back to her borrowed room, numbness spreading across her body. After guiding Kira down to the thin reed mat on the floor that served as her bed, Merrin paused to tuck a stray lock of hair back from Kira’s brow with feather-light fingers, then left her to her thoughts.

Kira could only lay there in the dark, bound to the floor by the futility of it all. 

Of what possible use could her _love_ be to Ben? It wasn’t a weapon that could be drawn against his enemies, a secret knowledge that could give him some advantage over them. Just a _feeling._ A feeling that cut to the bone, a feeling as central to her existence as a sun to its solar system. But that didn’t _change_ anything.

Especially because she knew he could never love her back. Not after everything she had done, everything her actions had taken from him.

After she had murdered Snoke, the newfound freedom had buoyed her; given her purpose, resolve. That drive to prove her strength to the galaxy had now evaporated, her identity now shifted on a fundamental level. Like a dragonsnake shedding its skin, the visions in the cave had sloughed off her ambition for power. But what of her now remained?

Merrin’s staggered appearances marked the passage of time. Stopping with a platter of food, she would only set it down quietly and leave, fetching the untouched dish later, never speaking.

Kira did not even have the energy to be grateful and, remotely, she began to wonder if she had lost her mind.

But after maybe two days, she found the strength to sit up, and she ate. Only a nibble, but improvement nonetheless, and Merrin noticed when she next returned. Instead of taking the tray and leaving, the grey-haired woman studied her thoughtfully, then sat down next to her, crossing her legs.

Minutes of silence passed in patient meditation, and Kira didn’t think she could ever adequately verbalize to this woman the heartfelt thanks now warming her. How she never rushed Kira, never pushed - only waited, allowing her to process and cope.

“You are different now,” Merrin finally stated in simple fact.

Kira nodded and found her voice. “I feel… empty.”

“It is both a good and bad feeling.”

She could only nod again, fiddling idly with a morsel of bread. “I don’t know where to go from here.”

The Nightsister graced her with a rare smile, just a little quirk of her dark lips. “What does your heart tell you?”

Taking a moment to consider, Kira responded, “I should… go to the Cave of Vessels. Meet the Winged Goddess. Maybe she’ll have the answer.”

“Are you ready to take that path?”

“Yes… no. It’s just… it’s the only path. I can feel it.”

“Then it is the one you must follow. Eat first. Regain your strength.”

She finished the meal, light fare and easy to chew, as if Merrin had known she couldn’t have stomached anything heartier. After Kira took a swig of water, Merrin began to speak, crossing her arms and leaning back against the rock wall, lost in memory.

“When the daughters and mothers of my people still lived, there was a ceremony for the one wishing to enter the Wellspring. Everyone, the children and the grown, would stand before it, to honor the one who would risk everything for the blessing of the Goddess. Along the way to the cave, seven women close to her would meet her one after the other, each taking a piece of clothing away. She could go with nothing. No weapons, no armor, only herself.” 

She turned to Kira with a meaningful look. “It was a way of preparation, to clear the mind, to remind her of what she must cast off to enter. There is always fear, but she must choose to feel it and move forward even so. You must do the same.”

Glancing down, Kira regarded the clothes she’d worn for as long as she could remember: the heavy tunic, thick-soled boots, charcoal cloak, hide gloves. Until recently, her old helmet ensured that not a scrap of bare skin could be seen by others. All vestments of an old life, items she had picked up over the years, when, even as a child, Snoke hadn’t cared enough to provide her with basic necessities. His concern had been cultivating her power, not fostering her wellbeing.

At Merrin’s gentle suggestion, Kira laid back down to rest a while longer, and when the Nightsister returned with more food, she ate it with gratitude, albeit no real appetite. A trial lay ahead, and she couldn’t go in with an empty stomach. Once finished, she stood and stretched her legs for the first time in days, and they left the room together.

Kira followed Merrin’s leisurely pace through a maze of low-ceilinged hallways lit by torches, staring at the remnants of the long-gone people who once lived there stood as a testament to them— alcoves filled with clay pots, wooden doors, woven mats lining the floors, scattered paintings of figures and animals on the walls.

At last the hallway opened up to reveal a cavern bigger than any structure Kira had ever seen, the ceiling so high the torchlight from below couldn’t touch it. At the far end rose a terra cotta red rock wall, with a rough oval entrance cut into the base, flanked by two torches lit with a green fire.

As they approached the wall, Kira’s nerves kicked into high gear, and she did her best to calm her breathing. Upon reaching it, she could see the entrance was only just big enough for a single humanoid body to slip through.

“It is time,” Merrin announced, grey eyes revealing nothing.

Kira’s hand went to her belt to unclip her saber, but stilled, hovering just above it. The thought of this weapon, her life, her survival, taken from her once again caused her hands to shake.Without it, she would be bare, that much more vulnerable, but at least this time she would hand it over of her own will, and that had to be enough.

She handed it to Merrin, breathing through the urge to snatch it right back, and Merrin took it reverently, holding it as though she sensed how precious it was to Kira.

The saber should have been the worst part, but never in living memory had Kira disrobed in front of another living being, and embarrassment sent a rush of blood to her cheeks. Unbuckling her utility belt, she let it drop to the ground, followed by her heavy cloak and outer tunic. Tugging off her knee-high boots and socks, she then stepped out of her dark trousers.

Down to her thin, almost threadbare basics, she shivered from the chill of the cavern, even the rough stone beneath her leeching warmth from the soles of her feet.

“Your hair,” Merrin said softly.

 _Even that,_ Kira thought to herself as she obediently unwound the simple tie holding her hair back in its customary practical bun, allowing it to fall across her shoulders.

It hit her suddenly how fragile, how weak she must appear in her simple linen underthings, but through the humiliation she mustered the wherewithal to look Merrin in the eye for approval.

“There are words that must be said first,” Merrin began, and facing the cavern at large, as though there was an audience to hear her, continued, “This woman stands ready to enter the Wellspring of the Winged Goddess. If she is worthy, may she rise anew.”

The hair on the back of Kira’s arms and neck prickled, and somehow Kira knew the place listened, perhaps the spirits of fallen Nightsisters and brothers quietly accepting Merrin’s entreaty.

“Enter and die, daughter,” Merrin said, a distant echo heard in the distance. In a lower voice, to Kira only, she whispered, “And may you rise anew.”

Kira’s chin trembled as a cold rush of fear flooded her, but she clenched her hands, set her jaw and turned to face the dark entrance. This close, she could just make out the rough outline of two animals painted next to the opening, in the style similar to the primitive Dathomiri artwork she’d seen in the halls of their dwelling place— a dog and a bird. If she had to guess, some sort of wolf and possibly a convor, but there wasn’t time to inspect it further.

Stepping up and over the opening’s rocky lip, she entered the deep darkness and let it swallow her whole.

***

Ben had not put near enough distance between himself and the disturbing monster in the water when his knees gave out. Stumbling, he reached out to brace against one of the thin trees, but sunk to the ground, aftershocks of the ordeal crashing over him.

His entire body trembled, remorse filling all the emotional spaces his utter horror left open at the realization that if he wanted to get back to his ship, he would have to return to the cultist village he had ravaged. Images of the strewn bodies filled his mind’s eye and his stomach rolled, fighting down an intense wave of nausea.

What had he done?

He couldn’t go back, couldn’t face the reality of his unchecked rage.

His shoulders began to shake with unbidden sobs, his face screwed up in a grimace against the self-loathing and guilt threatening to drown him. He was being torn apart, as if some beast had raked its claws into his chest and left him there to bleed.

How could he ever atone for this? What peace could he ever find after what he’d done?

Ben wished time would at least _pause_ while he tried to find his breath, tried to even inhale a single gasp, to stop the shame squeezing the air out of his lungs— but it didn’t. Soon he reached a place of numbness, the range of his emotions crushing him under their weight, until there was nothing left behind.

Forcing himself to stand, he pulled up his holomap, and calculated the Gahenn plains, and the fortress the monster said belonged to him, to be about a two standard days’ journey further south from his position on foot. So he started walking.

The forest eventually petered out to a broad wasteland, the plantlife shrinking to small, scraggly specimens before disappearing altogether. Low hills of grey and black rock rolled out to the smoke-choked horizon, and far to the west, he could just make out an unnatural dark spike jutting up into the dim sky. A fortress.

Deep within the earth Ben could sense the slow churning of molten rock, but even deeper, colder, a soft beckoning. He followed it.

He had no provisions, no equipment to make camp once the light of day faded. No stars shone above, their comforting presence blocked by ash clouds, but small beams of orange light could be seen where magma had broken surface.

Choosing a spot where he hoped he would be least in danger of lava burning him alive in his sleep, Ben laid down, hoping to rest until dawn. Sleep never came.

The inky spire silhouetted against the dawn separated into two long, tall prongs as Ben approached the next morning. He spent the entire day slogging across the plain, and against the failing light of evening Ben finally regarded the castle-like structure up close.

He could make out a wide entryway several spans above him, almost like a private hangar, but could detect no easy way up. Hopping over converging currents of magma, he collected what stamina he had left and made a mad running jump up to the platform, using the Force to augment his lift off. Still, his hands only just grabbed onto the metal lip, scrabbling for purchase, he channeled all his strength and hauled himself up and over.

Sweat poured down his face in rivulets, the heat of the liquified rock and his own physical exertion overheating him. Panting, he stood shakily and regarded the wide opening.

No light penetrated the complete darkness within the building, and once Ben stepped several paces into shadow, he had to ignite his lightsaber and hold it overhead in order to see even a few feet in front of him. Oppressive, the darkness gathered around him like a shroud, as if more than just an absence of light, but a physical presence pressing against the bright white-blue of his saber.

He reached a divergence and paused, unsure whether to choose between the hallways that stretched out to the left and right or the set of stairs directly before him that led down into further shadow. Quieting his mind, he listened.

 _Deeper,_ it called.

As he descended the steps, he tried to convince himself that the shifting movement on the edges of his vision, just beyond his saber’s glow, were just his imagination.

The stairs led him to a vast stone chamber, flanked by huge statues of what Ben could only assume to be the likeness of Sith hounds, each with four eyes and snarling fangs. At the far end of the hall, he could just make out through the gloom a semi-circular hole of coarse bedrock, at odds with the severe angles and sharp lines that outlined the rest of the architecture.

_Yes. Closer._

Ben crossed the length of the cavernous space, unsure why he felt the need to tread silently. When he reached the opening, he waited only a breath before stepping within and leaving the eerie glow of the hall.

The inner walls were the same rough stone, every inch covered in harsh, angular Sith runes, the inscriptions glimmering a dull red and bathing the smaller space in a crimson glow. The cave wasn’t long, and at the end sat a raised stone slab.

Just by looking Ben could guess the purpose of such a place, even if he hadn’t felt the damp chill of prescient darkness deep in his bones, the eddies of the Dark side of the Force swirling around him. He now stood in a Sith shrine.

Ben ignited his saber again to better illuminate the stone slab, and reached out to touch it. The moment his fingers brushed the rough surface, his lightsaber went out.

He had not extinguished it.

Malevolent laughter filled the cave, and the runes on the walls pulsed brighter, as bright as the white-hot earth seeping up from the core of the planet, and then Ben was plunged in total darkness.

Beside himself with fear, Ben spoke up, his voice trembling. “Who are you?”

The darkness answered, _“Your fate.”_

Out from the pitch-black slithered voices of the past, whispers of disappointment, shouts of anger, his own voice raggedly crying out _No!_

And then the silent scream of Kira’s blade, and the memory of the way it crooned seductively in his blood as he wielded it.

_“Can you feel it? How the fury feeds you?”_

Ben couldn’t answer, because however much he hated it, hated _himself_ for giving in to that fury, the truth of it rang loud and clear.

_“Know yourself or perish.”_

The sound of a woman weeping hit Ben’s ears, as real and as close as if from right beside him, and the weeping rose into a keening wail of agony.

“Kira!” Ben howled, instantly recognizing her voice, horror filling him at her suffering.

He smashed his thumb into the activator on his lightsaber over and over, desperate to find her, to slash through whatever evil held her and hurt her—

From nowhere, from everywhere, an oddly familiar voice:

“Solo.”

Clipped, deep, tinny through a vocoder.

Ben’s blood ran cold. Unable to even see his own body in the thick blackness, he still struggled with his weapon, if only now to see what abomination had manifested to end him.

A slash of yellow-red seared across his vision, the crackling thrum of another saber filling the space, and Ben could finally see a hooded figure step toward him.

Every bit as tall and broad as he, it lifted its head to reveal a helm of matte black, the battered steel around the eyes glinting in the red light. Dread, like ice, stabbed through him.

Finally, _finally,_ his saber ignited, and Ben demanded of the monster, “Who are you?”

The mask tilted at him in curiosity, and a new sliver of fear slipped into Ben’s gut. Leaning forward slightly, it answered him in the same clipped, almost sarcastic tones, his own familiar baritone filling the chamber.

“Don’t you know? I’m Kylo Ren.”


	12. Chapter 12

Kira’s skin prickled at the cold air that gathered around her, a chill made colder by the damp. Padding forward into the pitch black on bare feet, her heart leapt into her throat at the free fall of the first step downward, but found the steady slope of the incline and continued, willing her racing heartbeat to slow.

At first, only small, smooth pebbles pressed into the soles of her feet with each gingerly placed step, but those little stones soon gave way to the strange crunching of scattered brittle things that pricked and pinched her skin.

With a shiver, she wondered if they were bones. Hesitating only once, she pressed on. She did not fear death.

She’d seen too much of it to be afraid.

Time stretched and condensed, indeterminate in the dark, but down Kira went, each footfall a guess, until her foot met water so cold it burned. Retreating back a span to consider the way forward, her conclusion from before rang true—there was no path but onward.

The stone ground levelled off under the water, pooling around her waist, and she had to force her muscles to move, the ice-cold stinging her exposed skin, and seeping into her joints.

A flicker of white flashed in the corner of her eye, making Kira wonder if the tar-thick darkness was playing tricks with her vision. Wading on, she soon lost herself to the rhythm of movement, the sloshing of the icy water the only indication in this place that Kira existed outside of her mind, that she had a physical body.

Another white flutter on the edge of her vision, like the downbeat of a bird’s wing.

Kira stilled, the sound of the water swallowed up by the abyss, and the first slice of fear cut through her at the realization she’d never be able to find the way back in this murkiness. For a brief moment, she imagined what it would be like to flounder in this frigid sea forever, panic stirring at the thought.

With a calming breath, she accepted her fate—if she died there, so be it.

White feathers danced across her line of sight, almost blinding against the inky backdrop, and Kira finally was able to glimpse a small convor gliding in the space above her. Glowing ethereally, it disappeared into the distance, and Kira strained her eyes to see where it might have gone.

Distantly, she heard a happy chirp.

A pinprick of light appeared in front of her, soft and white like the bird, like starlight. Her spirits bolstered, Kira pushed through the freezing water toward it, hoping the bird might act as some sort of guide.

Squinting, Kira could just begin to make out the shadow of a larger life form walking toward her, creating its own source of light similar to the convor. The hooded figure, robed in white, walked across the surface of the water, each footfall sending out ripples into the pervasive dark. Perched on the being’s shoulder, the convor from before hooted softly at Kira as she gaped.

Craning her neck upward, she watched as the figure stopped a mere span away from where she stood frozen in the waist-deep water. Awe mingled with caution, unsure if this other-worldly being was something to fear or worship.

“Who are you?” Kira asked, her heart racing again.

“Once I was like you.”

The feminine voice echoed within Kira, her golden tones soothing, floating to her not through her ears but along the undulating currents of the Force.

“I am One of Three. The Three who were always One.”

“A… a Jedi?” Kira guessed, sensing the power and light contained within this being.

“I am neither Sith nor Jedi. I am so much more. As are you,” she answered.

The cryptic explanation didn’t mean anything to Kira, and she shook her head. “Are you some sort of deity?”

“We are the Ones who guard the Power. We are the beginning, the middle, and the end.”

Picking the only part of that response that made any amount of sense to her, _‘the end,’_ Kira asked, “Am I dead?”

“There is no death. Only the Force.”

Increasingly frustrated with her riddles, Kira demanded, “Are you here to help me?”

“I am here because you are here.”

“But what does that _mean?”_

“You must look inside yourself for the answers, Kira.”

“How is that going to—”

She interrupted Kira’s retort by extending a hand down to her, orange skin glowing faintly in that halo of light against the black.

The hood still obscured her face in shadow, but Kira could detect no ill will from her. She hesitantly placed her cold hand into the warm palm held out to her, unsure what exactly would happen next.

With a slight pull, Kira found herself stepping out on top of the water’s surface to stand toe-to-toe with the woman. Incredulous, Kira glanced down and around her feet, a thousand questions springing to her mouth, but all were silenced when she finally locked eyes with the crystalline blue ones before her.

The familiar white markings of the Togruta female framed the beautiful face under the hood, dark amber lips giving her a patient smile.

“Search your feelings. Look within.”

She struggled against the command, but soon gave in and closed her eyes.

Focusing inwards was a muscle-memory learned over many years of practiced meditation, she found that calmness of self that opened to the Force. Tapping into the energy around her, she quailed to find that this place knew no boundary, had no border, no physical end, and at the touch of the infinite, her mind began to balk.

_“Within,_ Kira. Not without.”

At the gentle reprimand, Kira obeyed, returning to herself, following the ebbing and flowing currents inside her own body. At the touch of the hand still holding hers, she sensed… a resonance with the luminous being. The life within Kira recognized it, knew it somehow.

Her thoughts a tumble, Kira tried to vocalize her discovery. “I… know you. You’re… a part of me.” Opening her eyes, she searched for an explanation in the lovely face. “How?”

“Look deeper,” she encouraged.

“I don’t want to.” More an introspective observation than a refusal, Kira detected her own hesitance.

“Sit with your fear. What are you afraid of?”

Whispering, Kira said, “What I’ll find.”

With a brief nod, she responded, “You fear your true self. Why?”

“I don’t… I don’t want to see.” Kira bit back tears. “That I’m not enough.” That she never belonged anywhere, could never belong to anyone. She hadn’t been enough for the First Order, for her master. Or for Ben.

The Togruta hummed in thought. “To discover one’s self is a fearful thing.” Tipping Kira’s chin up and forcing her to look into her eyes, she nodded. “Now _look.”_

So she went in.

Diving deep, she fell in and in, farther than she’d ever gone, to the core of her power, the strength of the Dark that she could wield without a moment’s hesitation. The destruction at her fingertips, the burn of anger, the satisfying scorch of vengeance—

She went in deeper.

To the chaos, the primal energy of survival inside every cell of her. The swelling, the splitting, the bursting—

Deeper.

To the space between, the incalculable, the infinite within—

Breath, spirit. Life.

The Light.

Kira gasped.

“Do you see? Both are in you,” the woman murmured, wiping a stray tear from Kira’s cheek, meeting her wide-eyed shock with a kind smile. “The great illusion is that the Dark and the Light are separate, opposites. But one cannot be without the other. Light and dark, day and night… birth and death. They’re reflections of each other, existing only because the other does. You are Light and Darkness _both,_ as are _all_ things. Spirit and form, soul and body. Coexisting, inextricable. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Kira said shakily, through her constricted throat. The truth of it thrummed through her with every determined thud of her heart.

“There is someone who needs you to show him the way.”

Kira nodded, and the convor still perched on the Togruta’s shoulder chirruped and fluffed its feathers.

Extending her elbow outward and grinning widely at the bird, she let it hop down the length of her shoulder and flit over to Kira’s, who stared at the bird in amazement as it nuzzled its soft head against her cheek.

“Help her, Morai,” she instructed the bird, who trilled in acknowledgement, and the woman turned and walked away, beginning to fade from view.

“Wait! Don’t leave!” Kira cried.

“I won’t,” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “I will always be with you.”

Her light died away, and the convor took flight from her shoulder, just before Kira sank back into the icy water.

This time, there was no bottom.

Sucked into the depth, Kira’s arms swung wildly, instincts screaming at her to find purchase, to swim against the downward pull of the water. The pressure of the water squeezed her from all sides, and air-hunger drove her over the edge of panic. Drowning, her body made her take that desperate breath for air, and water filled her lungs, scorching, freezing, and Kira was sure to die in that watery pit of a grave—

And then the water spat her out onto hard ground, landing with a heavy squelch that drove the fluid from her lungs. Her first ragged breath of true air hit her like fire, and she gagged and coughed for what felt like forever, before flopping over onto her back and coming to terms with her survival.

The convor, Morai, soared into view above her.

“Really?” Kira spat out hoarsely. “How come you didn’t have to drown to get here?”

Lighting on the ground next to her, the bird hopped over and warbled, nibbling delicately at Kira’s fingers in greeting.

Still miffed, Kira gave it a grunt and got to her feet, each breath still burning, but endurable one. Ahead, carved into a wall of dark stone, a white, glowing circle ringed with the image of running wolves illuminated the small space. From the middle of the ring, as if on the other side of some holoscreen, the carved image of a sitting wolf suddenly moved, getting to its feet and padding closer to her. 

Its size intimidated Kira, and if it had been a real wolf and not some surreal, moving image, she would have run in the opposite direction, weaponless as she was. Once it was only a short span away, it let out a ghostly breath, then sat on its haunches, as if in waiting.

Kira bit her lip, unsure of what to do. Morai flew up to land on her shoulder, chirping at her in encouragement.

Turning to the image glowing brightly in front of her, she said, “Can you help me find Ben?”

It didn’t acknowledge her other than to rise to all fours and turn, loping away further _into_ the wall as if crossing a distance, its image growing smaller as it walked forward and stopping only once to look behind to check if she was following.

How could she follow through stone?

Morai trilled and hopped off her shoulder, flying up and banking around over her head before gliding into the wall after the wolf. Kira almost screamed at the bird to stop, certain she would be left with nothing but a convor with a concussion, but it floated right through the wall and became a companion illuminated form above the wolf’s silhouette, a moving carving that retreated further into the rock face and farther into some other dimension.

Unbelieving, Kira reached out to place the flat of her palm against the stone, and it gave way as if made of nothing more than air. Glancing up, she saw the wolf incline its head slowly in approval.

She stepped through.

Starlight enfolded her, and she gazed in wonder at the open expanse of space around her, down to the filmy pathway under her feet, leading away in a gentle curve to entryways similar to the one she’d just traversed.

Morai flew above her, winging lazily along the path until it landed on the apex of a triangular entryway several spans down. Next to the entryway sat the Loth wolf from before, a creature Kira had only read about in second-hand accounts. Its form, so much more real than the carving on the stone, spoke of strength and grace, of power and wisdom, and Kira had to muster courage enough to approach the beast.

Each wide entrance she passed showed a different scene, a different place. Sandy dunes and strong winds, a kelp forest and darting silver fish. As Kira approached the opening Morai and the Loth wolf had chosen, at first all she could see was more darkness within, but then the stark clashing of red and blue light, what could only be lightsabers, danced across the view.

Mesmerized, not fully understanding, she drew close to the opening and could hear grunts of effort, harsh breathing, the grating of boots against a stone floor.

She would know the sound of that heavy breathing anywhere, and it forcibly dredged up old memories of a battle on a long-destroyed battle cruiser, in which Kira and Ben had emerged together, victorious. It hadn’t felt like victory shortly after.

On the other side of that strange window, Ben fought an enemy, cloaked in shadow, that wasn’t Kira. Foreboding filled her like the cold water she’d just left behind.

Looking up first at Morai and then over to the wolf, she said, “I need to go to him.”

The bird cocked its head and ruffled its feathers in answer. The wolf only inclined its head toward her, locking her in place with a gaze belying its intelligence.

Kira had no idea what help she could possibly prove to Ben, weaponless, exhausted, and vulnerable as she was, but none of that mattered if his life hung in the balance. No cost was too great.

As so many times before, she took a bracing breath, and stepped through the opening into hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shits gettin crazy round here huh
> 
> Thanks to all who are sticking out this journey with me! I will reiterate this multiple times, but please keep in mind that this story will culminate in a HEA. Also, I will be moving across the country in the next couple of weeks, so as much as I dislike it, updates may not be as frequent from this point onward. 
> 
> For those of you not familiar with the characters and animals mentioned here: 
> 
> [Ahsoka](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ahsoka_Tano), the Mystical Togruta, aka the Daughter  
> [Morai](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Morai)  
> [Loth-wolf](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Loth-wolf)
> 
> 😘


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK
> 
> I hate not updating weekly, it grates against my (probably unhealthy?) perfectionist tendencies, but this story is still rolling and completely outlined if not 100% written/beta'd. Thank you, readers, for your patience as I haul all my shit, my two cats, and my own ass across the country in the biggest move I hope I'll ever have to make in my lifetime. Updates will still be sporadic while things continue to settle down for me IRL. (Quickly, I hope.)
> 
> CW: Images of main character death. That said, this is still an HEA, I promise.

“Don’t you know? I’m Kylo Ren.”

Ben’s heart plummeted. A name from his childhood, a phantom of Ben’s insecurity, a persona that a frightened boy would hide behind when the world seemed too much. An imaginary version of himself he could slip into like a costume, the mantle of Kylo Ren could handle anything. Fighting parents, bullies, any pressure of life that felt too heavy for a young boy’s shoulders. Where little Ben had been afraid, Kylo was fearless. Where Ben was soft, Kylo was hard.

And there he stood, the name and the mask now manifest, and once again, a spike of cold fear shot through Ben.

The dark figure began to circle him, the helmet thrown in sharp relief from the spitting and sparking red light of the unstable saber he held loosely at his side.

“Afraid, Solo?” the apparition taunted him, its voice unsettling and mechanical, watching Ben as if he was some sort of prey.

“What do you want?” Ben asked, buying time. Was he supposed to defeat this figment of his imagination? Could it kill him? Was it even real?

“You know what I want.” Still the clipped, abrasive tones.

The non-answer sparked Ben’s anger, and he snarled and the grip on his own saber tightened.

In a satisfied purr: “There it is.”

Kylo rushed him, so quickly that Ben barely had time to parry the devastating swing and roll away from the red saber, the sheer strength of the blow and the collision of weapons convincing evidence that this dark being was much more than just a ghost.

“You can’t run. Not from me.”

He moved toward Ben with all the confidence of a predator assured of its kill.

In his attempt to put some distance between them, Ben had scrambled backward out into the wide-open space of the great hall, managing to stand up from the hard ground with only just enough time to block a powerful overhead slash meant to cleave his body in half. Ben shoved the red saber off his own with a turn of his shoulders, Kylo easily rolling with the shove and, flipping the grip on his red saber in midair, threw another violent backhanded slice at Ben’s midsection.

Only narrowly dodging the swing, Ben retreated, heart hammering in his chest.

_ “Coward!” _ Kylo roared, and hearing his own voice so distorted and violent was its own terrifying strike to Ben’s gut.

This masked terror was right— he couldn’t run. Facing this thing, despite his faltering courage, was the only option if he wanted to make it out of this stars-forsaken fortress alive. Gathering what resolve he had, Ben squared his shoulders and fell into a fighting stance.

“Finally.” He could almost hear the dark grin beneath the mask.

The barrage Kylo rained down left Ben gasping for breath, the last thrust in a series of ferocious cuts gouging a searing hole just beneath Ben’s collarbone. The pain, like a hot coal held to his skin, made him cry out in pain and retreat once again to recollect his strength.

“You’re  _ weak.” _ Kylo threw out his hand and hit Ben with what felt like a wall of stone, sending him flying backwards into one of the Sith-hound statues, driving the breath from his lungs and causing pain instantly and everywhere. Falling to the floor with a sickening thud, Ben’s knee twisted the wrong way and gave out.

Striding toward him, Kylo bit out, “Everyone knows it. Dameron. Uncle Luke. Dad… even Mom.” Stopping to look down at him from above, he said, “Give in. You’ve always known you’d fall from the Light.”

“No!” Ben yelled and scrabbled against the statue to stand, pain shooting up his leg while his collarbone screamed at him.

With another heavy downward slash arcing his way, Ben threw his lightsaber up only just in time to block the blow, but didn’t have the strength this time to push the blade away.

Leaning over the crackling, nearly blinding kyber beams, Kylo growled, “Let go! Feel the power of the Dark side!”

Ben’s strength ebbed, barely able to hold Kylo at bay while he pushed against the locked weapons, and with a sinking feeling, Ben realized his adversary told the truth. The Light had nothing more to give him, the last of his power drained by Kylo’s onslaught. If he was going to win this fight, he needed to draw strength from somewhere else.

This was his fate, after all, his inheritance. The Dark side.

Tapping into the seductive call of the Darkness permeating every stone of Vader’s fortress, a screaming storm of power poured into him and he shoved Kylo away.

Wounds forgotten, Ben continued to open himself up wider and wider to the well of Darkness that had dwelled in these deep shadows since before he’d been born. It swelled up in him, aching for violent release, and Ben lunged at Kylo, driving him backward.

Succumbing to the raw fury, Ben could feel the taint of  _ wrongness, _ but with the unadulterated power of it he became a howling devil. Faster, more agile, invincible now with darkness pulsing in his veins, he bent every ounce of will toward destroying the monster in front of him. Fate had carved this battle out for him, and nothing could stop him from reaching out and taking his destiny for himself.

His entire body sang with the notion that killing this enemy would give him the ability to crush anything that stood in his way, that this victory would taste sweeter than any had before.

Triumph crooned to him, Ben’s heart a drum of dark celebration as he beat Kylo back, blow by blow. He would rule this kingdom of darkness. It was his birthright.

A cry echoed out into the cavernous hall.

“Ben! Stop!”

_ Kira. _

Ben spun around, distracted, and it earned him a searing slice of pain on his unprotected shoulder, but he’d seen her—standing on the last step of the staircase, a living light that made the darkness inside him quail at her presence, recoiling from the sight.

There was no time to question her appearance, and only pure instinct saved Ben from Kylo’s next thrust.

“I’ll destroy her!” Kylo bellowed. “And everything that stands in our way!”

Saber clashed on saber, hissing and spitting into the gloom, and Ben heard Kira once again, faintly.

“Ben! Don’t!”

But the sequence had already begun. With the Dark side guiding him, as if planned since the beginning of time, Ben slid into the motions of the fight somehow  _ knowing _ what would happen. He would swing this way, and Kylo would step to the side. Ben would flip his saber in his hand at the last second for the kill stroke, aiming right for Kylo’s heart—

But Kira stepped in the way.

Her mouth parted in a silent ‘oh’ at the silver hilt of Ben’s lightsaber protruding from her chest, and Ben choked, extinguishing the weapon.

“No,” he breathed.

With startling clarity, Kira looked Ben straight in the eye, saying, “He’s you, Ben,” before collapsing to her knees and falling to the ground.

But the threat of Kylo Ren had not disappeared. Stepping over her still body and into Ben’s space, his saber still crackled dangerously, but something had changed in the approach. Numbly, Ben let his weapon fall, unignited, to the floor. Stomping up to him, Kylo leered into Ben’s face but didn’t attack, and Ben only regarded him, his will to fight evaporated.

Both were breathing raggedly from exertion, shoulders heaving, the quiet of the hall oppressive, expectant.

Leaning back, Kylo extinguished his saber and slowly reached up with both hands to lift the helmet up and off his head, letting it clatter to the floor, the echo of it bouncing off the stone walls. 

Ben’s own face stared back at him, worn, haunted, and scarred. All his old pain and anger were laid bare before him, painted in the purple bruises under his eyes and the scars that marred his face, reflecting back the emptiness and desolation he’d tried to bury alive.

“I’m being torn apart.” Kylo’s chin trembled with the words.

Struggling against the burning in his throat and the tears that pricked his eyes, Ben nodded at the man in front of him, a silent acknowledgement of himself and the darkness he’s always carried, and the pain and fear that sat at the heart of that darkness, so plainly seen on his own broken face. It was suddenly clear to him that every rush of destructive anger and hatred that flared up inside him was only a smokescreen, thrown out to hide that fear from others. From himself. 

And how many had suffered for his mistakes.

Ben closed his eyes, tears beginning to fall, crushed with the guilt of every life he’d sacrificed to the fire of his fear. Including the one lying motionless on the floor not a span away.

“What do you want from me?” Ben choked out, hurting and defeated.

“I  _ am  _ you,” Kylo murmured.

It was like the twist of a knife in his gut, but with the pain, Ben also felt its truth. To deny his own darkness was to cause the death of all those he loved. With one more nod, a final acceptance of all the parts of himself he’d tried to ignore and push away his entire life, Kylo returned the motion before vanishing in a smoky mist.

And then it was just him and Kira in the dim hall.

Every injury from Ben’s fight crashed back to him, and he half-sank, half-collapsed to the floor next to Kira, clutching his ribs and guarding his leg. His hands moved to hover hesitatingly over her body, fearful of touching her and feeling her stillness. A sob tore out of him and he placed several fingers against the inside of her wrist. If her glazed eyes weren’t enough to tell, the lack of pulse sealed his worst fear.

“No,” he groaned. “Please, no…”

Noticing for the first time her state of undress, Ben fleetingly wondered why she was clothed only in the thin scraps of her basics, and his heart broke when he saw that her lightsaber was nowhere to be found.

He’d never been able to hold her in life, and he weakly hauled her limp form into his lap and held her to him. A first and last embrace.

The wish that he could have had this when she’d been happy and whole nearly drowned him. As he gently lowered her back to his lap, the lolling of her head and the blankness in her face were lifeless in a way she never had been. She’d always been relentless, defiant, the strength of her will a thing to behold.

But Ben was alone in the belly of a fortress on a strange planet and far from aid. There would be no one to rescue her, to shock life back into her heart. After she’d given everything to save him, no one was there to save her.

Except, perhaps, for him.

One more choice remained open to him, he realized with a jolt. An exile, a murderer—what did he have to offer the galaxy, other than to trade his life for hers? The one last good thing left inside him was the original spark of life, and he would willingly give it to someone who deserved it so much more than he.

The law of reality was that in all circumstances, something must be given in order to be taken. No free gifts, no miracles. To cheat death, a life must be forfeit.

She would live well. He’d always known the good in her, the longing she’d always carried inside her for light and love. This choice was for the best. No one would grieve Ben Solo, anyway.

One last time, he pulled her up and held her close, her still heart next to his beating one, and murmured into her hair, “Forgive me,” before pulling her away to cradle her neck in one hand and place the flat of his palm against her belly, practically spanning the entire width of it.

Ben nodded to himself and closed his eyes, breathing deeply and finding the center, the current of the Force. The ebbing and the flowing of the Dark and the Light, the ever-churning, ever-flowing surges of power around him.

The simplicity of it stunned him, the ease with which he found he could gather his life-force together and push it down his arm and into his hand, but just before he could push it out and into her, something touched Ben’s shoulder.

A glowing hand. His grandfather’s hand.

“Wait, Ben.”

He shrugged the touch off, irritated to have been stopped. “I have to do this.”

“You would make her sacrifice meaningless?”

Ben paused, forced to consider that. But what was his life worth? He hadn’t deserved her sacrifice, and now he had the chance to fix the mistake.

Anakin studied Ben as all these thoughts passed over his face, then spoke.

“Ben, listen. Reach out. Can’t you feel that even now the Force is at work around you?”

Through the flood of grief and the breaking of his heart, Ben struggled, but then obeyed and found that Anakin told the truth. Stirrings of a power far beyond them could be felt on the tides of the Force.

Kneeling down next to Ben, Anakin placed his hand back on Ben’s shoulder and looked at him with a face full of kindness.

“This is not the end.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK AGAIN
> 
> First of all, kudos to everyone who's patiently stuck by this fic. Ya'll are amazing and always make my day with your comments!!!
> 
> Second, the chapters are still rolling, and I'm finding time to write a little bit each day. This story *will* be completed, and the HEA we're always searching for is about to unfold. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

If asked in years past, Kira would have predicted she’d die enraged, bloodied from battle, perhaps at the hand of an executioner. A mercenary’s death, unmourned and quickly forgotten in the vast scheme of the cosmos.

She’d even on occasion imagined it’d be at Ben’s hand, when her thoughts had turned morbid in the long sleepless hours on her flagship. There were few other endings possible for their unprecedented relationship, with her as Supreme Leader and him the last of the Jedi. In those moments, Kira supposed that to die by a sworn enemy’s hand would at least be predictable. The most troublesome part of those imaginings was that in them, Ben’s blade was swift, and his face a callous mask.

Never could she have guessed her death would be an accident.

The instant Kira had stepped through the portal from whatever starry realm she’d been and into the dark temple, she’d sensed a _wrongness._ Reaching out with her feelings into the Force, the only living being she could detect was Ben, despite the presence of an adversary. Hesitating a moment, she’d watched them fight, recognizing in the dark phantom’s stance and saber swings a graceless reflection of Ben’s own fighting style. With an intuition she hadn’t known she possessed, she’d realized the menacing figure fighting Ben, somehow, was Ben, too.

Locked in a struggle with himself, Kira watched them helplessly— knowing that if one of them killed the other, a fundamental part of Ben himself would be altered. Ben, _her_ Ben, would never be the same. The universe would be a colder place without the light of his kindness, his gentleness and she couldn’t wrap her mind around a reality without Ben’s warmth. 

She couldn’t let that happen. _Wouldn’t_ let it happen. 

She ran. Weaponless, without armor and no real plan, all she could do was throw herself between them. Closing her eyes, she prayed that just this one time she would be enough to save him.

At first, there was no pain, the shock of the white-blue saber plunging hilt-deep into her heart preventing her body from registering the searing wound.

Ben’s horror reached her first, a breathless _no_ falling from his lips, and it was only when he extinguished his saber that the pain came.

The mechanics of it were no mystery. Despite being fully aware that such an injury in so isolated a place meant death, she could still feel her heart pumping what blood it could to her lungs, her brain. Stubbornly clinging to life, as she always had before. Through all her suffering, all her momentary triumphs and heartbreaking disappointments, she’d survived, if only for that singular instinct that she always strive onward, no matter what. But no longer.

The stone floor of the hall rose up toward her in a rush, Kira only dimly aware that she had collapsed to the ground.

Her body failing, her mind growing sluggish, her last thoughts: _I’m dying._ _I hope he understands._

And then…

Nothing.

***

Except for a tug.

With some irritation, Kira mentally brushed it away. The least the universe could do was let her die in peace. But as she began to drift once more into nothingness, she felt the pull again from somewhere inside her ribs, the sensation dragging her back.

She felt like she was on the edge of sleep. Her body wouldn’t respond to her, as well it shouldn’t, seeing as she’d _died,_ but her mind wandered still. Kira mused that if this was the afterlife, she was less than impressed. Even as the thought occurred to her, she knew she hadn’t passed beyond death. This place somehow existed in-between.

At another insistent pull, she finally found the source—a thread, gossamer-thin but strong as a desert spindle-weaver’s web—and followed it. Away it stretched, a lone path in a vast black void.

Kira halted as sorrow, deep and aching, but not _hers,_ reverberated down from the other end of the thread. Floating in the darkness, she considered her options.

The thread was thin and strong, but not unbreakable. One good wrench and she’d be free of it, and she could happily slip into oblivion, the burden of life and all its pain lifted from her shoulders. She could rest.

Or.

She could follow a little further, first.

One small length at a time, Kira moved forward, leery now, preparing for more unpleasantness to ripple down the line at any moment. The sensation of sorrow only grew stronger, but as she closed in on the source, she detected strains of something else coloring it, something that weighed it down, drove it beyond sadness and filled it with longing and regret. Someone grieved.

Filled with curiosity, Kira crept on, hoping to catch a glimpse of this person who’d lost something they loved. More information traveled down the thread—a throbbing leg injury, grief swallowed by determination, a placing of hands on a smaller still-warm body—

Kira froze, understanding that what he loved and lost he now held in his arms, and with a rush she realized— _It’s Ben._

_He’s holding… me._

_Oh._

There was still time. She could still tear the thread out and run, escape from the tide of emotion now threatening to overwhelm her.

_Oh, Ben._

But she’d done it. Ben lived. She’d saved him from whatever nightmare had haunted him and with a flash she realized—there was _still time._ Whatever material made up this thread, it survived even her own death and had led her back to him, offering her the choice. To return or pass. To live or to die.

Dying meant peace. It meant leaving all of the struggle and hardship behind, to simply be. It meant sleep. Rest.

Living meant pain. Of all the things Kira knew from firsthand experience, that was the foremost. She’d known cruel masters, bending her to their will; the numbness of true despair and the cold grip of a loneliness she never thought she’d escape; the acid-like corrosion of old rage.

But if lived with Ben, life could also mean soft glances and holding hands. Sharing meals and walking together. She’d seen glimpses of the future he wanted, if he could have it, in the way he’d looked at her so many times before. 

Back on the _Supremacy,_ he’d begged her to leave, to start over with him. It had been the hardest choice she’d ever had to make, to refuse him then. She’d longed to go with him, wishing every hour afterward that she’d said yes. And now, Kira had a miraculous second opportunity to say the ‘yes’ she’d wanted to tell him all that time ago.

_I want to go back,_ she whispered into the void.

So she reached deep, down into that well of living Light that had always been there, even at her darkest. That would always be there, no matter how painful life might be. For pain and joy, just as darkness and light, were but reflections of each other, existing only because the other did. As much as living hurt, it also healed, and Kira embraced them both.

***

The first thud of Kira’s heart in her chest pushed new blood through cool veins like fire.

Every sense was now awake, alive and electric in a way they had never been before. A cold tear trailed from the corner of her eye to tangle in her hair. The smell of underground stone untouched by the sun. The warmth of Ben’s hands through the thin linen of her underclothes, one cradling her neck, the other spanning her belly.

She was alive.

Another tear escaped her, though this one of happiness. She twitched her fingers slightly, rasping them against the cold ground, a world of sensation even in that smallest of movements, grateful beyond words that she could touch the world around her once more.

Hearing a shocked gasp from above, Kira felt a tightening of Ben’s hold on her, but all she could manage to voice was a groan. Reaching up with some effort, she lifted her hand to cover the broad one laying on her stomach.

She blinked her eyes open, her entire view taken up by Ben, and his eyes latched onto hers, wide with disbelief, wet from heartache but alight with fragile hope.

Afraid of what his reaction might be, but risking it anyway, she reached up to touch his hair, his cheek, so soft beneath her fingertips. A blessing. Smiling, a chuckle bubbled out of her.

“Ben.”

Surprising her, Ben lifted her bodily and crushed her to him, a sob shuddering through him as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed in closer. She was crying now, too, but in joy, strong and pure. And even this, Kira being able to cry in Ben’s arms, was a new blessing.

Her weak arms began to shake and she had to let go, but he helped her upright, his arms bracing her for support. All he could do was look at her with a trembling smile, searching and studying every feature as though it was the first time and the last.

Through their connection, brimming over with wonder and happiness, a slash of anxiety emanated from him as he waited for her to say something, a thousand unspoken questions lingering between them, but most importantly: _What now? What happens next?_

His concern for her slipping into the tumble of emotions passing between them, Kira laughed, savoring his kindness, his warmth.

“This is next,” she said, with more confidence than she felt, before leaning in and hovering for just a moment in the space where he breathed. Unsure of the exact logistics, but knowing she wanted it with all her heart and soul, she pressed her lips to his.

Ben’s absolute shock was immediately drowned in a tidal wave of desire, responding like a single spark igniting a wildfire. When they parted, Kira glanced downward, bashful, only to notice the singed hole in her linen shift right at the base of her breastbone. Something about it snagged her attention and, lifting up the hem of her shift, her mouth dropped open at the sight of perfectly smooth skin where a jagged hole should have been. Not a scar, not a single blemish or discoloration marred the skin there, and Kira could read Ben’s echoing amazement before his gaze flicked up to her face.

“Your scar,” he said, his fingers hovering in the air over the cheek he’d marked with his saber so long ago on Starkiller, too shy still to close the distance.

“Oh, I don’t mind it,” Kira rushed. That scar had acted as a constant reminder of what they shared, and even though it was unsightly, it hadn’t injured her vanity.

“No,” he said, hushed. “It’s gone.”

Kira traced the area under her eye where the familiar rough groove should still be carved into her cheek but found only smooth skin, and they both fell into wondering silence, their eyes meeting.

Ben cleared his throat and looked away.

“My ship…”

Kira heard what remained unspoken: _it’s too far away._

She nodded and gingerly clambered out of his arms, taking her time rising to her feet on wobbly legs before extending her hand to him and helping him up as well.

When he tested his weight on the injured leg he flinched, almost losing his balance before Kira caught him under the arm and propped him up, uncertain just how long she could support him before her own strength gave out.

Taking the time to examine her surroundings, Kira noticed the great hall around them had lost its haunted air, replaced now by a still reverence, a holy quiet. Casting about the space for an exit point, the small cave at the far end of the hall caught her eye.

“Sith shrine,” Ben explained.

“Not anymore.” She began to hobble forward, prompting him to follow, drawn by some instinct whispering to her that they were meant to go to this place together.

As they crossed the threshold of the former shrine, an unseen presence filled the room and surrounded them. At first, they were afraid, but Kira began to detect distinct beings, powerful in the Force, and she sensed Ben’s calm.

_Life Essences. Transcendents,_ he told her. _Those who have come before and passed on into the Force._

A shimmering white light began to illuminate the small room, the runes on the rock walls glowing dimly as they stopped before the raised stone dais in the center of the cave.

A soft voice floated to them, as if from a distant place, or a long lost time.

_“These are your final steps. Rise and take them.”_

Kira’s wide eyes met Ben’s in confusion, but he seemed at ease, familiar with the voice.

A new, warbling voice spoke. _“Surrounds you, the Force does. Open to it you must. And then, open to you it will.”_

The runes on the walls began to shift, and Kira gasped as the glowing, pulsing markings lifted up and off the rock face, dancing in the air and coalescing into the singular forms of a convor and a Loth wolf. The bird alighted gracefully on the stone table, cooing and ruffling its feathers as the wolf stepped up on the other side and sat on his haunches, as if patiently waiting for Kira and Ben to move.

Another set of runes began to spin in the outline of a circle, faster and faster until they were only a bright blur, moving to hover between the two creatures on the table and widening into an opening large enough to walk through.

Kira knew exactly what it was.

_“Now you walk in balance within, and what is within is also without. Well done,”_ an older man said to them, his voice calm, but heavy with the weight of destiny and time.

_“Rise. The Force will be with you. Always.”_

The former masculine voice was unknown to Kira, but the second she would recognize anywhere—the Togruta female from the depths of the Cave of Vessels on Dathomir. Tears sprang to her eyes.

Tucking her hand into Ben’s, Kira gave his hand a squeeze. “Let’s go.”

With a small nod, he gripped her hand more firmly.

As one, they climbed up onto the rock table, stepped between the wolf and the bird and, gripping each other’s hands, moved as one into the spinning vortex, and out into the sunlight.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter focuses on our stormtrooper friends and their rebellion. Giving Finn his own viable, meaningful arc was important to me in the writing of this story, as well as the liberation of the people living under an oppressive regime.
> 
> Reylo shows up again at the end ;)

**\- earlier -**

“There’s a patch of First Order code that no one really knows about. A fail-safe, designed around the one major flaw in the system.”

The barracks was silent except for the squeak of Tic’s boot on the floor and the barely perceptible sound of his fingers drumming on his knees as he awaited a response.

Some instinct told Finn that this was the last vital piece of the plan, the one they’d been waiting for to move against the First Order. He and Jannah had counseled patience to the other members of their squad, as well as to the new recruits that swelled the rebel troopers ranks in unprecedented numbers, but no one slept easily and every day of waiting seemed longer than the last.

Blaze itched for action, especially now that his battalion of shock troops had begun their assault training for jungle terrain, and even in the level-headed Raushyr, Finn had begun to detect the hints of strain. Finn had the same anxieties but took his cues from Jannah and pushed through when he reminded himself why they put their lives on the line.

When he remembered all the soldiers who deserved better lives than the one forced on them by the First Order, Finn discovered he was capable of new heights of courage.

Glancing over at Jannah, Finn saw her raise her brows at Tic in a way that strongly brought Rose to mind, and he had to smile.

“And that flaw would be…?” Jannah asked.

Tic’s eyes flashed with excitement, fighting back a sly smile. “Us.”

* * *

**\- present -**

The cargo cruiser shuddered as it hit atmo, turning Finn’s stomach, already knotted with nerves, like it did every time he felt the familiar lurch of a ship. His grip tightened on the grab bar above his head, palms sweaty in spite of the chilly air in the belly of the cruiser.

The plan was simple. He and his squadron had gone over it again and again, rehashing every contingency and anticipated challenge. The freedom of countless soldiers hung in the balance, and the weight of every life weighed on Finn, reminding him of this mission’s importance.

He had to trust in the plan, and in every trooper that had signed on to it.

Too soon, the cruiser shuddered, jostling the troopers against one another at the landfall, and the first real spike of fear shot through him.

It was time.

***

“Ensign KB-1820. What am I looking at?”

The typical pre-battle tension on the flight deck of the Retribution tightened by several degrees, but Raushyr took it in stride, feigning innocent confusion as he walked over to the lieutenant addressing him. He was easy to find, a bare face in a sea of trooper helmets; they weren’t regulation uniform for officers.

“I’m not sure, sir.” Cocking his head at superior’s screen and bending closer, he continued, “It appears to be some activation sequence, but I’m not familiar with the maneuver.”

The lieutenant scowled and dialed the intercom for the engine room. “This is Lieutenant Roker on Flight Deck A2. Lieutenant Cort, come in.”

Raushyr smiled beneath his helmet and quickly surveyed the room, pleased to see everyone else calm at their assigned station, despite knowing just as well as he which maneuver the sequence activated.

 _“This is Lieutenant Cort, over,”_ the intercom crackled.

Raushyr’s lieutenant tried to keep his voice low, glancing over at the flight deck commander to make sure he was well out of ear-shot. “Cortie, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

A taut second of silence, and then, in a tone of uncertainty that could be clearly heard through the static: _“Affirmative.”_

Lieutenant Roker’s face paled as he pressed the intercom button. “What the _hell_ is going on down there?”

***

Other troopers liked to make fun of those who were assigned to the engine rooms for their mission directives after graduation from training school. While it was true that people like Tic wouldn’t ever see action in the field or get to fly a TIE fighter, the nicknames and snide remarks hadn’t ever bothered him.

The truth of the matter was that only those with exceptional intelligence were allowed even close to the engine room. The _Retribution_ _,_ and every other Star Class Destroyer in operation at that time, were finely-tuned, relatively safe space-craft, with safety nets built into the fuel systems that powered them. Most of the time, everything ran smoothly with minimal interference.

Except in the rare instances that they didn’t, and the First Order had learned the valuable lesson not to let the fate of an entire crew rest in the hands of people who didn’t know what they were doing.

Tic knew himself, and was well aware he didn’t have Blaze’s battle courage, or Raushyr’s people skills, or Jannah’s innate leadership ability. He had brains, not bravery.

As his twitching fingers hovered over the input screen in his little corner of Engine Room 6, he wished for the first time he had the latter.

He’d been waiting for the moment no one was nearby to punch in that code his friend had found, each set of footsteps that sounded behind him fresh torture for his nerves. Finally, his chance had arrived, and all he could do was look at his fingers as if they belonged to someone else and he had lost control of their movement.

Mouth dry, he swallowed loudly and closed his eyes, for all the galaxy wishing that it had been Blaze’s job to do this, or Raushyr’s, or _anyone_ else’s responsibility to change the fate of every soldier in this fleet forever.

But the job belonged to him, and him alone. And his friends trusted him to do it.

He would not let them down.

His fingers flew across the input screen, hitting the last button forcefully to enter the patch of code into the system, and leaned back in his chair, hands shaking even worse than before and his breathing loud and ragged to his ears.

Shortly afterward, the engine room’s chain of command disintegrated.

Lieutenant Cort had acted with all the authority a low-ranking officer had, bound by duty to escalate the issue of the unknown activation sequence to his direct superior.

The commander in charge of Engine Room 6 had turned on Cort with vitriol, but to Cort’s credit, he remained composed, calmly pointing to the sequence still flashing repeatedly on his holoscreen. Immediately, the commander whirled around and half-jogged out of the bay, leaving every one of his subordinates, including Tic, with nothing to do but wait. Cort had hesitated for a moment, then followed him.

Minutes later, raised voices could be heard echoing down the corridor.

“Get out of my way!”

“But sir! _What do you want us to do?”_

“Standby and await orders, lieutenant, like you were _trained to do!”_

One pair of boots stomped away down the hallway, and Tic could imagine Lieutenant Cort standing there just outside the door with a stricken face, unwilling to face the engine room team, and Tic couldn’t blame him.

Tic’s people were at the ready. Blasters had been cleverly hidden behind wall panels, under desks. They weren’t trigger-happy shock-troops, they weren’t pilots, but they were prepared, and knew this ship and its code. They were about to take matters into their own hands.

***

The humidity of the jungle had Blaze dripping in sweat the moment he stepped foot on-planet, and even leaning against the trunk of a huge tree to escape the sun had no cooling effect.

His company effectively at standstill, many of the troops had hunkered down in what shade could be found, some taking naps, others cleaning their weapons. Blaze kept a close watch on the scene, choosing a strategic spot where he could listen in to the comm-station.

Blaze’s lieutenant, a hulking man called Wallis, now sat with his broad shoulders slumped, currently receiving the dressing-down of his life over the commset.

_“Who ordered you to halt?”_

“No one, sir, but I’m receiving strange feedback from the _Retribution—”_

 _“Are you aware, lieutenant, that we are in the middle of an INVASION?!”_ the comm crackled with the volume of the voice on the other end, and Blaze had to stifle a laugh.

“Yes, sir! But I do not know how to proceed with the orders coming down from command—”

 _“You CARRY THEM OUT!”_ the other voice bellowed. _“WHERE IS YOUR IMMEDIATE SUPERVISOR?”_

Lieutenant Wallis’ commander was currently preoccupied with trying to establish a contact with his own captain on another commset, his own face a little pale.

At the silence, Wallis’ commset roared to life. _“I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH INCOMPETENCE! YOU CAN EXPECT A COURT MARTIAL THE MINUTE—”_

The connection fizzled, and Wallis stilled. With the countenance of a man about to face the gallows, he rose and approached his commander, who was now repeatedly jamming the power button on his own commset.

“S-sir?” The entire company turned their eyes to the scene about to unfold. “Communications are down.”

“I know,” the commander breathed.

“What do we do, sir?”

“They did it. They really did it,” the commander muttered to himself.

Lieutenant Wallis cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, sir, but who did what?”

“Operation Monarch…” The commander stood up with a dazed look and faced his men. “We’ve been left behind.”

***

“General. We’re receiving reports that Operation Monarch has been initiated.”

 _“What?”_ Hux snarled, whipping around to face the captain of the _Retribution._

An out-of-breath engine room commander suddenly stumbled through the double doors. “I can confirm, sir. The sequence is already running. We’ve now lost contact with the ground troops per…” he swallowed loudly, “per protocol.”

Hux’s eye twitched, and clenching his gloved fists, he turned his back on his men.

It was already too late, then. He was the only one with the authority to initiate Operation Monarch, because once activated, there was no going back. The invasion of Ajan Kloss, and the final decimation of the Resistance, was over _—_ suddenly, instantly, without his permission _—_ before it had even begun.

* * *

**\- earlier -**

“How are _we_ the major flaw?” Finn asked Tic, annoyed. “None of us asked to be here!”

“No, no, listen. It’s not that we _are_ the flaw, it’s that they _think_ we are,” Tic said, pointing up at the ceiling. “We’re expendable.”

Jannah regarded Tic with serious eyes. “Explain.”

“Okay, okay. So, you might not know this, but down in the engine room we work with a lot of techies-for-hire. There just aren’t enough of us to do the job, so these contractors get brought in. One of them, this girl, she…” Tic shook his head, leg still jiggling. “She’s a genius. Doesn’t belong here. _So_ underpaid. Only reason she took the job was to get off her homeworld. Anyway, she was digging through mountains of code—this is what she does in her free time, she _likes_ doing it—and she found this sequence called, ‘Operation Monarch.’”

“And this is the fail-safe you were talking about?” Jannah clarified.

“Yeah, yeah! So, let’s say a big mission goes bad. The brass have to cut their losses. They don’t have time to recall the troops. So what do they do? They initiate Operation Monarch. And what protocol does that rollout? Total shutdown of the space-to-ground comm-system.”

Finn’s eyes went wide. Tic pointed at him.

“You guessed it, buddy. They kriffin’ leave us. They cut ties and save their own worthless hides and get gone fast. They don’t even wait to recall the TIE pilots.”

“Who else knows about this?” Jannah interjected.

“Just the upper crust. Junior officers are expendable, too, you know.”

Finn sat back a little in his bunk. “Unbelievable.”

“Oh, I believe it,” Jannah added sourly. Turning to face her squad, she squared her shoulders. “Let’s make them regret thinking we were the ones worth leaving behind.”

* * *

**\- present -**

Chaos reigned on the ground. Troopers argued with lieutenants, and lieutenants begged for answers from commanders. The unwieldy battalions of soldiers, now joined by a legion of shock-troops and several dozen landed TIE strike group pilots, made maintaining any form of discipline impossible.

Everything had gone according to plan— Operation Monarch had been initiated, the First Order’s control had crumbled to pieces, but those events had only set the stage for what was to come: the rebellion. 

Finn locked eyes with Jannah, and she nodded. _Now or never._

She removed her helmet.

A bare face in the war field had its intended shock, and silence fell around her, a ripple of surprised hush spreading outward from where she stood. Not only was it dangerous in enemy territory, a fact drilled into every trooper’s brain from childhood, but it was also blatant insubordination.

Whispers began to reach them, questioning, fearful. Jannah stood tall, her gaze roaming over her company before striding toward a rock on the edge of the clearing.

The only remaining sounds were two raised voices in the distance, but at the pervasive quiet even those faded into nothing. Every head turned to her, waiting.

“Brothers and sisters!” she called out, her voice carrying.

Finn’s heart swelled in his chest, his admiration for her conviction, her self-assuredness, lifting his spirits.

“Brothers and sisters, do you know why we are here today?” She paused, giving them time to think. “We’re here today because we were taken from our homes, given a helmet, and told to fight and die for someone else’s war.”

Even the forest was silent.

“You are more than your helmet! More than a weapon! More than a number! Your life is worth more than a body on a battlefield! They order you to shoot, so you aim your blaster and obey. We fight for them like good soldiers. But who would fight for _us?”_

Finn felt more than saw an uncomfortable shifting in the ranks. The words she used were radical, rebellious, and a challenge to everything they were taught. That was the point after all.

“Look around you. At the people standing next to you. These are _your_ people. Not the cowardly uniforms that just abandoned us all on a strange planet with no protection!”

Behind him, Finn heard soft murmurs of growing assent.

“We are so many, and they are so few. We have a choice: fight a war we didn’t choose to start, or lay down your weapons. Now is your chance to take off your helmets and choose a life for yourself, not the one forced on you by the First Order war-machine!” She blazed with passion, every inch of her alight with the fire of real hope. “Today we choose!” Raising her blaster high into the air. “Brothers and sisters! _Will you join me?”_

On cue, Finn pulled his helmet off his head and threw it on the ground, raising his blaster to match her. The thud of another helmet falling to the grass sounded behind him, and then others. One after another, weapons were lifted into the air, hundreds, a thousand. More.

“Today we are liberated! Today we stand for the friends and comrades standing next to us! Today we are free!”

The roar of thousands of voices shouting their agreement surrounded Finn, and as his own voice joined theirs, he knew he’d never felt so wild with fierce joy, so empowered. So free.

***

Jannah fell directly into the position of authority she was born for. The First Order officers left behind were rounded up efficiently and peacefully under Jannah’s command while Blaze spearheaded the action. Most surrendered their authority without a fight, wounded by their own apparent lack of value in the eyes of the officers who’d left them behind.

Reports from Tic and Raushyr’s team began to filter through their ad hoc comm systems, the mutiny of the _Retribution_ and the rest of the fleet ultimately successful. General Hux had been imprisoned, his cronies incapacitated, and now, leaderless, the fleet was at a standstill, awaiting further orders from the ground.

Finn and a select few volunteers removed their First Order gear, left their weapons behind and approached the Resistance encampment, which had been contacted with terms of surrender.

There was only one face Finn searched for in the sea of celebration that had engulfed their entrance to the base, and when he saw her, his heart skipped a beat.

Rose collided with him heavily, and Finn used the momentum of her crash to pick her up and swing her around, refusing to let her go now that he had her back in his arms. For the first time since he had seen her in that cell on the First Order flagship, he felt as though he could finally breathe.

Reluctantly allowing her a little space, he scanned her for any sign of lingering injury. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? You got caught, and I was so worried! I checked on you, but then one day you were gone and I—”

Rose cut off his rambling by planting a kiss square on his mouth. “I’m here now, dummy,” she laughed through her tears before pressing in close to him once more.

A tense stillness slashed through the joyful atmosphere like a knife, and suddenly a swath of lifeforms moved aside to make way for someone.

Finn’s eyes went wide as saucers, his blood running cold when he saw the broad form of Ben Solo, the last of the Jedi, caked in grime and blood and obviously injured, carrying the limp form of former Supreme Leader Kira Ren in his arms.

***

Crossing his arms, Finn scowled in the dim light of Poe’s makeshift office. Rose stood next to him behind a large metal desk, her own features set in a mask of distrust.

Ben Solo had all but collapsed into the chair across the desk from where Poe now glared at him in anger. The barely conscious woman in Ben’s arms hadn’t stirred an inch, even as Ben had adjusted his hold on her in his seated position.

Chewie, standing guard at the door and armed to the teeth, gave a low warning growl. Poe glanced at Chewie before pinning his glare back on Ben.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Poe gritted out. Ben nodded mutely, resignation clear on his face, as if he only expected as much. “You know what she’s done. What _you’ve_ done.”

From the grimace Ben made, Finn surmised that Ben knew exactly to what Poe referred, even if Finn himself was now left somewhat in the dark.

“What were you thinking, bringing her here? She is our enemy!” Poe continued, raising his voice in frustration. “I should’ve had her shot on sight! And _you—!”_

Ben still said nothing, only meeting Poe’s fury with apologetic eyes. On closer inspection, Finn saw the real state of things. Battered and wounded, with holes singed in his clothing, arms trembling with weakness and deep purple circles bruising his eyes, Ben Solo was close to the edge of exhaustion. Still, Finn staved off any inclination toward compassion. There was a story here that he didn’t know, and the presence of Kira Ren among them did not bode well.

“Solo. What am I supposed to do with this? With her?” Poe ran his hands agitatedly through his hair. “With _you,_ damn it? After the stunt you pulled—?” He cut himself off, falling into his chair and rubbing his temple. “Kriffing hell, Solo.”

Uncomfortable silence stretched between them all, and Rose tightened her grip on the fabric at Finn’s elbow.

“She saved my life,” Ben finally murmured waveringly.

“What?!” Finn burst out, uncrossing his arms and taking a step forward. “Poe, you can’t possibly believe that!”

Rose stirred. “I believe him.” Every eye in the room flew to her, but she stood her ground. “I do. When I was her prisoner, she came to interrogate me.”

“Rose—” Finn started.

“No, listen. All she wanted from me was to know where he was,” she continued, gesturing at Ben. She shook her head. “I didn’t get it then, but now…” She studied Kira where she lay in Ben’s arms.

Kira stirred, breathing in deeply, and every person stiffened, Chewie hefting his bowcaster and Poe’s hand flying to the blaster at his hip.

Bringing one hand up to fist in the fabric covering Ben’s chest, Kira breathed, “Ben?”

“I’m here,” he answered gently, looking down awkwardly where her head was nestled in the crook of his shoulder. She gave a small sigh in response and settled further into him, asleep almost immediately, a calmness radiating outward from her that stood in complete contrast to the frenetic rage everyone had expected from her.

Finn could only stare dumbly at the scene in front of him, watching as a small smile lit up Ben’s face as he regarded the woman in his arms.

Ben glanced at Poe, whose jaw had dropped open. “I know we can’t stay, but she needs medical care.” 

Finn scoffed, but Ben pressed on. “I can surrender myself in the meantime, just… she needs time to recover. We can sort everything else after. Please.”

“You’re going to let this happen?” Finn bit out at Poe.

A tug on his arm from Rose caught his attention.

Speaking softly, Rose said, “I think it’ll be okay. She’s changed. I can tell.”

All seriousness, Poe turned to her. “How do you know?”

“It’s pretty obvious,” Rose explained, her own smile lighting up her face. “People change when they’re in love.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are at the tail end of the homestretch, but because I'm a glutton for punishment... I decided to write an epilogue. Hence the increase in chapter count. 
> 
> THANK YOU FOR YOUR ENDURING PATIENCE WITH ME DEAR READERS

“Hey.”

Ben looked up from where he’d perched on the lone straight-backed chair in the med-bay room, sitting as physically close to the head of Kira’s medi-bed as possible, to see Poe in the doorway.

Kira had been asleep for two full standard days, under strict guard at all times. Ben had left her side only when absolutely necessary. He wanted to be there the moment she woke up; the idea of her opening her eyes to a strange empty room, or worse, to the face of a stranger, both discomforting and unacceptable.

Keeping his voice low and running his hand sheepishly through his hair, Poe asked, “Not awake yet, huh?”

Ben shook his head. Poe sighed, the weight of a thousand worries audible in the exhalation.

Victory for the Resistance didn’t mean things had gotten any easier. If anything, Ben could imagine that building a new governing system from the ground up would be every bit as stressful as waging war, just in a different way.

“Look,” Poe said, after chewing the inside of his cheek in silence for a time. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but I’m expected to make decisions that my people can trust. And I  _ don’t _ trust her. I can’t let her stay.”

Nodding, Ben dropped his gaze at his hands, now folded between his knees.

“I’m not asking—”

Poe held up a hand to cut him off. “I know.” Another heavy sigh. “What happened before… I have to know the truth. Did you help her escape?”

“No,” Ben answered immediately. “I still don’t know how… or who…” 

Instant guilt flooded him, remembering the tension of the last time the two of them had spoken, the darkness that had danced on the edges of his vision, the way Poe had suddenly choked on air, hands grabbing at his neck. The image haunted his waking moments, and Ben knew he could never forgive himself for giving in to that violent rage. “I’m so sorry,” he finished in a whisper, unable to meet the eyes of the man standing in front of him.

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

Ben shook his head, unwilling to accept that.

_ “Mistake? _ Poe, I could have  _ killed _ you—”

“But you didn’t.”

Now Ben looked back up, disbelieving.

“Well?” Poe pressed, now smiling roguishly. “It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than the likes of you to take this handsome bastard out of commission.”

Ben’s vision began to swim, and the bracing weight of Poe’s hand on his shoulder gave him a measure of comfort.

Poe murmured, “Do you ever get the feeling that if one thing, just  _ one, _ had gone a little differently, the entire course of the galaxy would have changed?”

Ben glanced over at Kira’s sleeping form, her face peaceful, her only movement the rise and fall of her chest with each breath.

“Yes,” he replied, just as quiet.

“Glad I’m not the only one.” Poe made his way toward the door. “She can stay until she’s well. There’s no rush.”

“Thank you,” Ben said, unable to convey the depth of his gratitude in words.

“I think it’s the least that Leia would’ve wanted me to do.”

With that, Poe left, and Ben gave in to the tide of tears that bore witness to both the breaking and the healing of his heart.

***

The medical team exhausted all avenues trying to diagnose what kept Kira in comatose-like slumber. They performed every test, took every manner of scan they could think of, but found nothing besides the perfectly healthy body of a young human female, even going so far as to dunk her in the bacta tub on several occasions just to see what might happen.

Ben knew why she slept like the dead, although he declined to inform the staff. Who would believe him, to say she had breathed her last, and then returned to breathe once more? To raise oneself from the dead must take a toll on the body. Ben figured she needed as much rest as she could be given, despite a growing worry that the toll had been too great, and that she might not resurface a second time after all.

His own wounds were many and varied, but quick to heal with the application of bacta patches. Alone with his thoughts, Ben had time in spades to consider how grossly unfair to Kira the whole mess was, that he should walk away with barely a scar while she languished in a medi-bed. He had to wonder just what she had gone through to get to him in the belly of that dark castle, what she’d suffered to appear before him like an angel from some distant moon to save his life.

His own body begged him for sleep, but he couldn’t rest. Leaning over to lay his arms on the thin mattress, his eyelids began to close of their own accord, when Kira’s hand twitched next to his own.

Adrenaline jolted through him like a stim shot, and he watched entranced as Kira’s eyes fluttered open and met his own. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

“Ben.”

“I’m still here.”

She was too weak still to do anything but cry, and Ben reached out to clasp her hand in his, giving her a small squeeze. He was still there, and so was she. And they were together.

***

Kira proved to be a better patient than Ben ever would have guessed.

The poking and prodding of the medical staff wore on Ben’s nerves far more than Kira’s, who bore the repeated questions and physical examinations with unprecedented patience.

She complied with every order, endured every indignity with a quiet fortitude that left Ben wondering whether it was in fact Kira that had woken up out of that coma and not some changeling.

When the last doctor had listened to her lungs, asked her the same mundane questions for the hundredth time, and  _ finally _ left, Kira’s gaze met Ben’s again, and a moment of eye contact with her was enough to convince him the Kira he knew still lived. No one could scorch his soul with a mere glance the way she could.

“We’re on Ajan Kloss,” Ben blurted, a blush creeping up his neck.

She only nodded, laying back down on the bed and closing her eyes, clearly exhausted from the onslaught of activity.

Ben’s own fatigue rolled over him like a tidal wave. Telling himself that Kira probably only wanted some peace and quiet, he decided it was high time he slept in his own quarters.

Making some mumbled excuses, and knowing full well how much more he owed her, he exited the med-bay and found the small bunk down the hall that he’d been given the day they’d arrived.

Kira was awake and well. There would be time later to tell her everything that needed to be said, he thought as he lay down. As soon as he closed his eyes, he fell into a long, dreamless sleep.

***

Consciousness slammed into Ben hours later with the suddenness of a lightning strike and he bolted off his cot, his only thought,  _ Kira…! _

Only after he’d skidded into her room did he notice that she already had company.

Rose, of all people, sat casually on the edge of Kira’s bed, a bag of fresh fruit spilled out on the sheet between them. In the middle of explaining to Kira how to dig her fingers into the flesh of a prickle pear to peel it, they both turned to look at him, surprised.

A little out of breath, Ben waved them on. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Kira replied, before gesturing the chair next to the bed, unmoved from where Ben had placed it. Her attention back on the fruit as soon as Ben sat down, she pulled at the bumpy fruit rind, exposing the russet-colored pulp inside. She glanced at Rose, who grinned and nodded.

Gingerly taking a bite, Kira’s eyes widened as she chewed, and she promptly tore into the fruit as though she hadn’t had a proper meal in months. Which, Ben privately considered, might be the truth.

Rose laughed. “So you like it, huh?”

“It’s amazing,” Kira mumbled around a mouthful of fruit.

A single drop of juice ran down her chin, and Ben had to avert his eyes, stamping down on a stirring inside him that he didn’t want to dwell on just yet.

“I’ll bring some more tomorrow,” Rose smiled, standing up to go.

“Wait,” Kira said, wiping off the errant drop of juice with the back of her hand, to Ben’s relief. “I’m… I’m so sorry. For everything.”

Rose bit her lip. “It’s okay.” With a glance thrown Ben’s way, she continued, “I think I get it now.” She wrinkled her nose playfully. “See you later.”

Her exit left the two of them in silence, Kira’s contemplative, Ben’s awkward.

“How are you feeling?” Ben asked at last, more to break the quiet than anything else.

Kira seemed to wilt, fruit still in hand. “I don’t know.”

A hundred questions burned inside him, but the first one that came out of his mouth was, “How did you escape?”

“It was a little orange woman.” Kira set the fruit down on the sheet and made two wide circles with her hands, putting them up to her eyes to mimic glasses and looking at Ben through them.

His eye twitched.

_ “Maz?!” _

“She never told me her name,” Kira explained, her hands falling to her lap.

Righteous indignation filled him to the brim. To think he had been blamed for it, when the notorious Maz Kanata had been at fault this entire time. He resolved to give her a piece of his mind the next time he crossed paths with that pirate.

“Unbelievable.”

“Most everything that’s happened to me since then is,” Kira said, rather mirthlessly.

Firmly back in the present, Ben lifted his eyes to hers and swallowed, fighting a swell of emotion as he looked her over. “You saved my life,” he said shakily, unable to stop his chin from trembling. “And you  _ came back. _ How?  _ Why—” _

Kira stopped Ben with the gentle press of her fingers on his mouth. “Because you saved mine,” she said with a small voice.

Taking her hand from his lips, Ben lowered his face until his forehead pressed against her knuckles, letting her words wash over him.

He felt her other hand on his head, slipping into his hair, and he squeezed her hand tighter.

“I didn’t know it in the beginning, or even in the middle of things,” she continued. “And back then, all I believed I could ever do was hurt you. But when I thought I was losing you… I realized that to find  _ you  _ I had to find  _ myself, _ first. And then I knew.” Her hand paused its caress, stilling to press gently on the crown of his head. “I love you, Ben Solo.” She said it in wonder, with a softness he’d never heard from her before.

Too much, it was too much.

“I don’t deserve it,” Ben choked out, holding onto her hand, an anchor in a sea of guilt and grief.

“That’s all right,” she said, still running her fingers through his hair. Ben could hear the tears in her words, now. “Neither do I.”

***

They stayed like that for a while, but eventually Ben could sense her exhaustion catching up with her. Releasing her hand to wipe his face on his sleeve, Ben told her to get some rest and that he would be back later.

Simultaneously loath to leave her but grateful for the emotional reprieve, Ben went back to his room and took a nap himself, dropping into the realm of half-remembered dreams with ease.

***

When Ben woke up again, it was the middle of the night. At first not sure what had dragged him into wakefulness, a sharp spike of emotion piercing through the Force made it clear.

Making his way back to the med-bay, he did not find Kira in her bed, and her guard was slumped over and snoring loudly on the ground next to the door.

Focusing, he spread out his consciousness through the Force, widening his perception until he found her, shining like a beacon. Making his way to her in the dark, he followed her bright signature to what appeared to be the training yards at the southern end of the base.

Hell-bent, Kira wailed away on a weathered strike dummy with a wooden staff, grunting and growling with effort. At first Ben could recognize saber-form in her stance, but the longer it went on, the farther her hits slipped from technique into single-minded blows. She pummeled the dummy over and over with the staff, fury pouring out of her with every hit, until the staff split in two.

With a frustrated scream, Kira hurled the splintered piece of wood away from her and threw out her hand, obliterating the dummy with the Force, shattering it, before falling to her knees.

Only then did Ben run to her, dropping down and gathering her into him, holding her close as her body heaved with sobs. 

“Everything is different now,” she said raggedly into his neck. “So why?  _ Why?” _

“Why, what?” Ben murmured into her hair, keeping his arms tight around her.

She shuddered through another wave of tears. “Why am I still so angry?”

Even if he didn’t know the exact answer to her question, Ben thought he might know what she meant. He could understand how the echoes of pain could haunt a person, and was keenly aware of the suffering she’d known, the scars she still bore inside her from a life lived for so long in lonely darkness.

“It’s okay to still hurt,” he told her. “It’s okay.”

Ben knew more than most that when it felt like you were falling apart on the inside, and he was happy he could be there with her in that moment, despite everything. Having someone holding you together on the outside could help, even if just a little.

***

Kira needed clothes.

Having arrived at an unfamiliar planet by, for all intents and purposes, magical means in nothing but her basics, Ben decided it was high time they get her properly dressed in something other than a scratchy medical gown.

Early, before the rest of the base rose from their beds to begin the new day, Ben made his way to the uniform repository. Smuggling her out of the room without the guard wouldn’t have been wise, considering Kira’s escapade the night before, and too much attention would be drawn if all three of them were walking about the base, so Ben decided to try his best on his own.

Ben knew Kira was tall, but wiry and skinny, and he anticipated a bit of trouble over her sizing. As luck would have it, the humanoid rebel uniforms came in one-size-fits-all.  _ More like one size fits no one, _ Ben grumbled to himself as he made his way back to her room, imagining the way the jumpsuit would puddle around her ankles, her wrists. It would simply have to do.

The sound of the ‘fresher greeted him back at the room, and Kira’s humming pleasure at the steady stream of hot water as she methodically washed the dried bacta from her hair.

_ Clothes? _ she asked him wordlessly, hearing her excitement in his head as clearly as if she’d said it to his face.

_ Yes. _

_ Bring them in! _

_ I’ll… leave them on the counter. _

Her amusement trickled over to him, but he ignored it, and opening the ‘fresher door only as much as necessary, he tossed the jumpsuit onto the sink and retreated, his eyes trained on the floor the entire time.

Dressed in the jumpsuit, hair clean and combed, Kira stepped back into the room several minutes later. As Ben took in the sight of her, the uniform’s sleeves and legs rolled up several times over, he couldn’t help the affectionate smile that spread across his face. Her cheeks still pink from the hot water, he couldn’t see her blush, but wondered at the shyness he detected in her.

Shy or not, Kira acted on impulse, striding over to him and craning her neck back to meet him gaze for gaze, laying a hand on his chest, determination written all over her features.

The medbay was hardly a romantic setting, but Ben would go anywhere if it meant she could be this close to him. Before he could think them through, the words fell out of his mouth:

“You’re so beautiful.”

And maybe he was a fool, but it was true. He’d always thought so, from the moment they’d locked lightsabers in the snow on Starkiller, despite his fear at the time; had known it in full on the  _ Supremacy _ , as she slayed her master to save his life; had seen it from afar as she’d stood in the long grass and the wind when he’d bargained with her for Rose’s safe return.

In the fluttering warmth of her revival, even as he grieved over her dead body in his arms in Vader’s castle on Mustafar.

Every memory tainted with pain, but that was life. The truth of it all lay in this— that he’d always wanted to tell her how beautiful she was to him.

The words caught a little in his throat, the delivery a bit botched, but he _meant_ them. And not just in the way that she was objectively attractive, because she undeniably was. No, what had drawn him to her the moment the Force had sent the trajectory of their lives careening together had always been the fire alight within her, her strength, her unflinching drive. Like a helpless moon-moth to the flame, the light burning hot within her heart that had ensnared him.

A half-sob, half-laugh burst from Kira, and grabbing the collar of his shirt, she pulled him down to her and kissed him.

Stars help him, he would give anything to live in that blaze forever.

A rush of joy and want ignited between them, and fueled by the echo of desire he felt in her through the bridge that joined their minds, he boldly moved his hands to her shoulder, her waist, bringing her closer. Moving his lips against hers, she responded immediately, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck, her hands tugging his hair.

He had to break for air, but the sight of her tears curbed his hunger for more.

_ I’m all right, _ she reassured him, even as she swiped at her cheeks.

The fear he sensed from her had nothing to do with what they were doing, but that he would stop now that she’d started to cry. Cupping the back of her head, he showed her in the way he pressed his lips to hers once more that he wanted the kisses and the tears. He told her in the way he embraced her tightly in his arms that he wanted the old-new clothes and the lingering smell of bacta in her wet hair. He wanted the way her hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt, the heat of her lips moving against his and the way it set him on fire.

He wanted all of it, and all of  _ her, _ and he told her so.

And Kira knew.

***

Mornings in the jungle began with damp air and rain-showers, but even as the first rays of sun broke through the cloud cover the humidity and heat would rise to sweltering.

Ben found the temperature bordering on intolerable, sweating through his clothes the minute he stepped foot out of doors, but he put on a brave face for Kira’s sake. Her fascination with living planet-side led them to explore more of the base every day, despite the stares, outright hostility, and even the occasional flight from her presence by former stormtroopers.

He hadn’t realized just how underfed Kira had become until she started to eat properly. Out in the sunlight, he could see her cheeks filling out into curves where once there were only peaky angles, and one morning he even noticed a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Chewbacca had volunteered to accompany them as their guard not long after the doctors had declared Kira well enough for short walks. To Ben, it almost seemed like a casual stroll with friends than a supervised excursion.

To everyone’s surprise, Kira got along famously with the Wookiee, the mechanics of space-craft a topic of much conversation between the three of them, and when Chewie suggested Kira take a tour of the  _ Falcon _ , she broke into a wide grin.

“The  _ Millennium Falcon?” _ she said in breathy excitement. “The fourteen-parsec Kessel Run  _ Millennium Falcon?” _

Ben knew then that Kira had indelibly sealed herself to Chewie’s old smuggler’s heart.

After fondly correcting her numbers with a growl that reminded Ben so strongly of his father it pained him, Chewie led them both to the tarmac and to the  _ Falcon _ herself.

Even walking up the ramp, hearing the clatter of their boots on the grate sent Ben back to days of his childhood on this ship, Han’s presence felt in every bolt and wire. Ben knew Han was gone, had confirmed it with Chewie days ago, but he hadn’t given himself the time to process it.

Making his way to the cockpit, Ben sought a moment alone as the buried grief now surfaced. The ache between his ribs bloomed painfully when he looked up and saw the golden dice still in the place they’d always been. Ben closed his eyes, Han’s last words to him ringing in his ears—

_ Go save the galaxy. It’s what your mother would have done. _

A rumble from Chewie startled him.

“The  _ Falcon _ doesn’t belong to me,” Ben said, shaking his head in response. “If anything, you should have her—”

Kira popped into the cockpit as Chewie growled back. Looking up at the Wookiee in confusion, she questioned, “Copilot? I thought… Ben, isn’t this your ship?”

A decided roar from Chewie confirmed it, then wandered away, leaving the two of them alone.

“I guess it is, now,” Ben murmured, looking back down at the dice in his hands.

He hadn’t saved the galaxy. That accolade belonged to many others, including his father and mother. But his own life had been saved by someone who wanted him, and the woman his world orbited around for so long now had a second chance at life. She could giggle and be silly with friends, stand in the sunlight of new planets, accidentally make wirings pop and fizz in fits of frustration. She could smile, get angry or sad, love whom she pleased— and that meant the galaxy to  _ him. _

“Would you… want to be my copilot?”

He asked it so softly that he was afraid she might not hear, but Kira answered without a second’s hesitation.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Always.”

***

One morning, Ben decided they had stayed long enough, and Kira didn’t argue.

Appropriate notifications of departure were made to Poe, and a long, teary-eyed farewell hug to Rose.

Taking their time provisioning the  _ Falcon _ , when all was said and done, Ben fell heavily into the pilot’s chair and ran a hand through his hair, the question,  _ where do we go from here?  _ still weighing on his mind.

Kira lightly settled herself in the seat next to his.

“So…” Ben started, either nerves or the extra cup of bitter caf he’d had that morning making him jittery. “I was thinking we could visit Naboo for a bit. Theed is supposed to be nice in the spring. Or… maybe Chandrila. There’s property there in my mother’s name. I’ve probably inherited it, but then again, if she’s written me out of the will I wouldn’t know it…” He gave an uneasy chuckle, the possibility sounding more likely when he said it out loud. “It wouldn’t really matter, though, we could always just get jobs—”

“Dathomir, first,” Kira interrupted, staring ahead with unfocused eyes.

“The Outer Rim? Why there?”

“Someone’s waiting for me. She helped me find you.” Kira turned to him with a small smile. “And she’s holding on to something for me.”

Ben returned her smile with affection. “Dathomir, then.” He reached over and started the engines, punching the start sequence on the nav-panel to prep the ship for flight.

His attention refocused on Kira when she laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Wherever you are, I’ll be happy there, too.”

Ben had to pause, his heart tripping over itself, struck by her calmness, her absolute certainty.

Kira Ren had been an unholy terror in a past life, but she’d only been terrifying when shackled by the lies beaten into her by her former master. She’d been a pacing, wild animal in a cage, enraged and desperate to escape.

She was free now and she knew it. Deep in her bones she knew it, and Ben could feel her certainty, her centeredness, like a fixed point in the universe, like a guiding star leading him home…

To her.


	17. Epilogue

Dathomir’s star-studded twilight was fading into the hazy pink of dawn as Ben and Kira stepped out from the stone portico that served as the entrance into the Nightsisters’ ancestral home.

Kira stopped, drinking in the filtered red light of Domir, the planet’s crimson sun. The wind whipped across the rocky outcrop, Kira’s clothes fluttering around her, and something about the scene stilled her. Some energy in the air tugged at her instincts, as if to say—

_Wait. Listen._

Ben had taken a few steps more toward the _Falcon,_ then realizing she’d halted, turned to face her, questioning.

Tilting her head up toward the sky, Kira furrowed her brow but closed her eyes, tuning in to the currents of the Force eddying around her.

Through the push and pull of twisting energies common to every inhabited planet, Kira could just make out a soft keening, half-forgotten and too often ignored, coming from the lightsaber at her hip.

The memory of Merrin’s happy tears at Kira’s return drifted into her mind, and the relief that had flooded through Kira as she gratefully accepted back into her possession her most trusted weapon.

Cutting through that remembered joy was the dull ache in the Force unfurling from its power source, the kyber crystal set in the blade’s hilt.

Kira recalled how it had screamed when she’d bled it, the green prism darkening to the color of blood as she channeled the Dark side of the Force into it. Her master had assured her how essential the task was to obtaining power far greater than she could ever imagine, how the true strength of the Darkness would be revealed to her only when she’d dominated the crystal, bent it entirely to her will.

The _wrongness_ of the act had never left Kira, and the crystal had remained an open wound, weeping with pain whether or not it was activated. Ben had felt it, too, when he ignited and wielded her saber the day she’d been captured by the Resistance. He remained silent on the subject, but she knew he’d heard the crystal’s pained cry.

Quickly unclipping the saber from her belt, she tore open the energy lens compartment and extracted the crystal, holding it up in the light. It glimmered as darkly red as Dathomir itself.

“What are you doing?” Ben murmured.

Her eyes flicked over to him. “Something I should have done a long time ago.” 

Scanning the immediate area, she wondered what it was about that exact spot that had spoken to her. The open vista just now touched by rosy morning light would leave anyone speechless, the valley below broken only by giant craggy ridges the color of rust, some with primordial carven faces pointing sky-ward, mouths open as if singing ancient hymns back to the cosmos.

Once more obeying instinct, she knelt down to the ground and brushed a fine layer of silt from the rocky outcrop, her fingers discovering grooves, deliberate concentric circles in the stone. Clearing more dirt away, she uncovered a larger circle that bore a distinct resemblance to the portal that had opened for them all the way back in the black fortress on Mustafar. 

She inhaled sharply. This was it, this was the place it had to be done.

Tucking her feet under her, Kira placed the crystal gently on the ground in the center of the circle and covered it with the flat of her palm. 

To Ben, she said softly, “I’ll need your help.”

Kneeling across from her, he placed his large hand over hers and nodded.

Kira inhaled slowly, gathering into her all the power she could stand, and sensed Ben doing the same.

The crystal grew hot where it touched her skin, and the Force expanded and contracted with each breath, pulsing through both of them and into the crystal, before exploding into a storm of charged energy. Their bodies twin conduits, they could only act as channels to the raw power, far too overwhelming to control.

The quiet that fell on them suddenly in the wake of the tempest left them trembling, ears ringing with the silence. Ben took his hand away, the loss of his warmth leaving Kira’s skin cool.

And under her hand, stark against the crimson ground, lay a pure, clear crystal.

Her eyes widened at the change as she delicately fitted it back in the small chamber above the energy cell in her lightsaber, sealing the hilt closed once more with a practiced hand. Despite the shaking in her fingers, Kira pushed through her apprehension and ignited her blade.

A bright white beam filled the air around them with a satisfied hum, almost like a breath of relief from the crystal inside. Where before it had condemned her with its pain, now it spoke in a whisper—

_Well done._

Ben’s gaze met hers, and she saw mirrored in his face her own wonder.

 _The crystal is the heart of the blade,_ Kira recited to herself.

And now, hers was healed at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. You guys. I’m… thrilled, relieved, reeling a little with disbelief, that this journey has come to its conclusion. What a long ride. 
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH to those who’ve read this as I wrote, and who patiently waited chapter to chapter for updates! 
> 
> I have to give a shoutout to those who’ve followed this story and let me know about it:  
> dinotopian  
> Galaxymanagement  
> Tigersmeleth  
> AniseNalci
> 
> AND ESPECIALLY to these lovely souls--  
> Impossiblefangirl0632  
> reyloanne  
> enloeddmedia
> 
> \--who have commented on like every single chapter and made the hard work of this story so rewarding. You all are so appreciated. What a pleasure it has been seeing this adventure through your eyes. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
> 
> This story would not be what it is if not for Erulisse17, who has blessed me as my beta. She is amazing in more ways than I can even articulate. Yes, you should go check out her work. If you liked this fic, you’ll love [“Forsworn.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22181665/chapters/52956037) I promise. 
> 
> Please feel free to stop by and visit me on [tumblr](https://shewhospeakswiththunder.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/shewhospeaks2), I am always writing something new and do the update-post thing there.


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